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of the 
Old Testament 


Studies in the Beginnings and 
Growth of Messianic 
Prophecy 


oe By 
EDWARD MACK, D.D., Ph.D., LL.D. 


Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Interpretation 
in Union Theological Seminary, 
Richmond, Virginia 


PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE of PUBLICATION 


RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 


COPYRIGHT, 1926 
BY 
PRESBYTERIAN COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION 


PRESS OF 
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON, RICHMOND, VA. 
1154—(1)—70730 


To My Father 
JOSEPH BINGHAM MACK 


A Student of Prophecy 
At Whose Feet I Caught the Vision 


CRO 





THE FOREWORD 


OME one has said that God’s plan for sal- 
vation runs like a golden thread through all 
man’s spiritual history. God's plan is more than 
a thread, it is the whole warp of the web, in which 
the woof is made up of all man’s struggles since 
the beginning. Man’s institutions, his govern- 
ments, laws, customs, schools, and his social and 
religious organizations formed a very rotten 
woof. The web woven without God’s help was 
all “filthy rags.”’ ‘The Old Testament teaches us 
that through all the ages the Master Weaver is 


God. His plan of salvation is the golden warp 
which has saved the web from falling to pieces. 


Under His hand man’s institutions are growing 
better, the web of human life is becoming ever 
finer and stronger, and when “His Kingdom 
comes”’ it will all be fine gold, woof as well as 
warp. 

Holding this belief, I count it an honor to 
write the foreword to the present book telling of 
the growth of this plan in the Old Testament. 
Having read with great profit the author’s for- 
mer book, ‘The Preacher’s Old Testament,” | 
eagerly seized the opportunity, kindly given me, 
to read his new one and have been greatly bene- 
fited by it. It is a thoroughly scholarly book, 
treating convincingly all the important results of 
modern investigation, and yet it is so clearly and 


beautifully written that the lay reader is carried 
along on the argument as by an irresistible flood. 


This book meets a serious need of the time. 
We have heard so much and become so obsessed 
of late with futile discussions of the so-called 
“higher criticism’ of the Old Testament, of the 
historical problems developing out of archaeolog- 
ical research, and especially of the natural science 
of the Bible—which, by the way, this Book of 
Religion was never intended to teach, because 
God gave us the Book of Nature to study for 
ourselves—that we need to have our attention 
turned again to the story of God’s plan for the 
salvation of men, as told in the Old Testament. 


Our author shows that there is a Gospel in the 
Old Testament, as well as in the New; that there 
is a Divine Person whose footsteps are followed 
through all ancient history; a Redeemer, a King 
Immanuel, dreamed of, sung of, typified, proph- 
esied, by the ‘Holy men of God’’ in all the ages, 
as ‘‘they were borne along by the Holy Spirit.” 
He shows that this ideal of the Messiah devel- 
oped gradually in the inspired record, as men 
were able to understand it. ‘“The Seed of the 
Woman” becomes the ‘‘Son of Abraham,” the 
‘son of Dayid,” the “Sen: of) Goda vanaees 
gradually grows through history, law, poetry, and 
prophecy into the “Anointed One,” the “King of 
Righteousness,’ ‘Immanuel,’ “God with Us.’ 
So in time men were prepared to understand the 
whole glorious plan, until finally through Isaiah 


the Messiah is revealed in all His supernal love 
as the ‘Suffering Servant of Jehovah,” ‘“‘the 
‘Vicarious’ Sacrifice, and our ‘Penal Substi- 
tute,’’—titles which our author rightly holds can 
never be misconstrued and should never be for- 
gotten. 


The cure for all doubt will be found in the 
honest study of the Messianic Prophecies of the 
Old Testament in connection with their fulfillment 
in the New. The answer to this ‘“‘new paganism,” 
which denies the divinity of Jesus, refuses to ac- 
cept the doctrine of ‘‘vicarious”’ sacrifice, makes 
of the Atonement nothingness, and would dissi- 
pate into mist our hope of Immortality, is found 
in this Gospel of the Messiah. I hope, therefore, 
that this book may be widely read and believe 
that it will help to give a surer faith to many a 
feeble heart. 

CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY. 


Houston, Texas. 


AU LTORIS EN OE 


ape substance of these chapters was first 

brought into form for a series of talks on 
Prophecy to Sunday School teachers in the First 
Presbyterian Church of Richmond, Va. Request 
for such a course of Bible study had been made 
by the Session of that Church. The chapters 
were brought into the final form, in which they 
are now published, as lectures delivered in vari- 
ous Conferences in China during the summer of 
1925, at Peitaiho, Kuling, Mokanshan and 
Tenghsien, under the support and direction of 
the Milton Stewart Evangelistic Fund. They are 
now published in response to numerous requests 
that they be put into such permanent form. 

The author claims no originality for the views 
and interpretations which these lectures present. 
Nor must the reader begin his journey through 
these pages with the anticipation that the theories 
and problems of Prophecy will be handled tech- 
nically and comprehensively. The author has 
only given expression in a simple way to a per- 
sonal experience in the most important and most 
fruitful field of Old Testament studies, the field 


which really counts. 


Richmond, Virginia. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PROPHETICAL 

LEIEER ATURE wert cte nanos i fala ion st 9 
THE New TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPH- 

jay" aaa Koh yc Seid Sk LO av AR en a 18 
PRINCIPLES AND METHOD OF INTERPRE- 

SA TIONAL 7 te rrr) een es ca Alen Fe Piod 
PropHECY BEFORE THE FLtoop. . . . 40 
THr AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS .:..0 06... 47 
PAYS OF THEOL UDGES |. Govern ante) Waihie eS 
MESIOUMOETTHRAISINGS I Ase tal curt haters OW 
SDE IVLESSIAH. OF THES PSALMS... 2 oe 15 
JESUS*AND THE (PROPHETS) 20/0 <2", 1/9] 
EROPHETS OF THE VICXILE ..4cey 1) ate VL O4 
PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION Era. . 120 
Sete ISION) OF ISAIAH le oneal too soho 
THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH. .. . . 146 
a EOOUFFERING OERVANT®) 00.0 Wh) 158 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION .. . . 176 


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CHAPTER ONE 


GENERAL VIEW OF PROPHETICAL 
eA GRE 


N recent years the conflict of opinion over the 

literary and historical problems of the Old 
Testament has diverted attention from the real 
content of this most important record of ancient 
religion. Compared with the mass of this con- 
troversial and merely propzdeutic literature, the 
amount of Messianic material available for study 
from modern writers is meager. The inquiring 
reader finds few text-books covering the field, and 
in his quest must glean here and there from intro- 
ductions and interpretative works. Strangely 
enough, modern Old Testament theologies con- 
tain scant purely Messianic discussion. 

Necessarily, therefore, an inadequate idea of 
the scope and emphasis of the Messianic message 
of the Old Testament is generally prevalent. 
Sometimes it is supposed that prophetical litera- 
ture is confined to the sixteen canonical books of 
the Major and Minor Prophets. Others suppose 
that Messianic Prophecy is merely a matter of 
sporadic and emotional utterance, without any 
intimate relation to the comprehensive literature 
and the vital thought of Israel. 


10 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


To remove these false impressions, and to put 
the Messianic hope in its proper place as the 
heart of the Old Testament, is the purpose of 
this series of studies. 


The Hebrew Canon of Prophecy 


The Jewish editors, or collectors, of the Old 
Testament books, in the order in which they 
have come down to us, accepted as prophetical a 
larger number of these books than is indicated 
in our English Old Testament. These original 
editors put the books of prophecy into two 
classes: 

1. Our fifteen books of prophecy as arranged 
in the English Bible, grouped as 

(1) Major Prophets, including Isaiah, Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel; and 

(2) Minor Prophets, or sometimes called 
‘Book of the Twelve,” including all from Hosea 
to Malachi, exactly as in our English Bible order. 
So that, concisely stated, our prophetical books, 
as found in the English Bible, were grouped as 
four books in the ancient Jewish Canon: Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and The Book of the Twelve, 
all of which were known as the “Latter 
Prophets.” 

The book of Daniel was not classified by these 
ancient editors as one of the Latter Prophets, 
but, probably because of its manifest apocalyp- 
tic character, was placed in another part of the 


SURVEY OF PROPHETICAL LITERATURE 11 


Hebrew Canon, that is, the third group, known 
as ““The (Sacred) Writings.’ This conception 
of Daniel finds a parallel in the New Testament, 
where the book of Revelation is not grouped with 
the Epistles, although like them in letter form, 
but is placed by itself and apart, as an apocalyptic 
book. 

2. In addition, there was a second group of 
prophetical books, called the ‘‘Former Prophets,”’ 
which included the historical books of our Eng- 
lish Bible from Joshua to II Kings, and also 
counted as four books in the Jewish Canon, as 
follows: Joshua, Judges, Samuel (I and II), and 
Kings (I and II). 

To the Hebrew mind it was a natural con- 
clusion to classify these so-called historical books 
as prophetical, for the following reasons, from 
among many others: 


(1) They were considered to have been writ- 
ten by prophets. In II Kings three chapters are 
taken almost verbatim from Isaiah (36-39), and 
one from Jeremiah (52). There are also fre- 
quent references to prophetical authorship. 


(2) The prophets are the central, heroic 
figures of these books, always greater than priests 
or kings. On this honor roll are such heroes as 


Joshua, Eli, Samuel, David, Elijah and Elisha. 
(3) The plan and purpose of these six books 

is prophetical, or sermonic. They are ‘‘preach- 

ing’ books, and the prophet was essentially a 


12 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


preacher. They are always making appeal to 
Israel from the bitter consequences of apostasy, 
from the grace of forgiven sins, from the unfail- 
ing kindness of Jehovah, to turn from idols and 
from oppressive injustice to Jehovah their God. 
Aptly indeed may they be classed as books of 
prophecy. 

These eight prophetical books of the Hebrew 
Canon, its four Former and four Latter Prophets, 
cover approximately one-half of the whole field 
of Old Testament literature. 


Prophecy Coextensive with the Whole 
Old Testament 


But this is not all of the story. Other parts 
of the Old Testament, besides the distinctively 
prophetical books considered above, are well 
stored with prophetical passages and purpose. 
This is true alike of Law, Poetry and Wisdom 
literature. 

y The first gospel message is found in Genesis 
(3:15) in the promise that the seed of the woman 
shall bruise the serpent’s head, eventual victory 
out of present defeat and sorrow. The books of 
the Law are laden with messages of hope in a 
Coming One, whether in legal institution, such as 
Passover or Sin Offering, or in historical symbol, 
such as the brazen serpent. 

_ Job looks up for the Redeemer, who is to 
vindicate. Proverbs tells of incarnate Wisdom, 


SURVEY OF PROPHETICAL LITERATURE 13 


the Admonisher and Advocate. Even in the 
despair of Ecclesiastes may be seen an index 
finger pointing toward hope in the future, not 
nigh, and yet not lost altogether to the vision of 
faith. 

However, it is in the Psalms that we are 
always finding the fairest and clearest expression 
of the Messianic Hope, as for example, in the 
introductory Second Psalm, placed at the gate- 
way of the book of Psalms to tell those about 
to enter, how often in its pages they will find the 
promise of the Lord’s Anointed. For this reason 
the Psalms are so frequently quoted in the New 
Testament as messengers of the Messiah. 


If now we turn our attention to the prophets 
themselves, who held these high hopes of the 
future~and kept alive the Messianic longing, we 
shall find them present throughout all the ages of 
Old Testament life and literature. One of these 
prophets was Enoch, who rebuked the wickedness 
of his day and brought immortality to light. 
Noah, the fourth generation from Enoch, was 
also a preacher of righteousness, and himself a 
child of Messianic hope. 


From these ancient preachers on down to the 
unknown prophet, whose book is called ‘“Mala- 
chi,’ that is, ‘“‘“my messenger,” no age failed of 
its prophetic teacher and leader. Time would 
fail to tell of Deborah and Barak, of Samson and 
Eli, of Nathan and Gad, of Jehoiada and Jere- 


14 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


miah and Daniel, who subdued kingdoms, wrought 
righteousness, stopped the mouths of lions, out of 
weakness were made strong. 


While present everywhere in the Old Testa- 
ment story, it is evident also that these prophets 
are the most important and most interesting per- 
sonages in the story. The centers of light and 
interest in the Old Testament are its famous 
prophets, whose names have been cherished, as 
their victories of faith have been honored, in all 
ages. On this roll of fame are Abraham, father 
of religions; Moses, lawgiver, and organizer of 
an undying people; Samuel, confidant of God, and 
maker of kings; David, ideal king, and singer of 
songs that can never die; Elijah, champion of the 
sole and spiritual deity; Isaiah, the seer, whose 
clear spiritual vision ran ahead of the centuries; 
and Jeremiah, fearless contender for righteous- 
ness and God in perilous days of infidelity and 
corruptness. To indicate the focal centers of 
Old Testament life and history, we need only to 
call the roll of the prophets. All the interesting 
and heroic story of the Old Testament people is, 
in a word, the field of prophecy. 


Once more, our proposition that the field of 
prophetical literature is practically co-extensive 
with the Old Testament is further confirmed 
when we take into account the nature and con- 
tents of the prophets’ message. Both the modern 
rationalistic-historical and the older orthodox 


SURVEY OF PROPHETICAL LITERATURE 15 


methods of interpretation have given too narrow 
a view of the content and meaning of prophecy. 
On the one hand it is more than moral and social 
leadership, while on the other it reaches further 
than foretelling. The content of prophecy ap- 
proaches close to the sum total of the Old Testa- 
ment message. Jesus showed to His disciples 
from the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, 
in ALL the Scriptures, the things concerning Him- 
self. 


1. The message of prophecy was in part warn- 
ing and admonition. “O son of man, I have set 
thee a watchman over the house of Israel. If 
thou speak not to warn the wicked, his blood will 
Mcconiresac tiyinand: (ER zekrelvg32)\" Israel 
was a wayward and selfish people, and but for 
the voice of prophets might have been lost long 
ago. The tragedy of the Old Testament 1s that 
Israel would not hearken to its prophets. Said 
Jehovah, “I have sent my prophets, rising early 
and sending them, but ye would not hear.” (Zech- 
ariah 7.) 


2. The prophet was a teacher of his people. 
Israel had much to learn, and the lessons learned 
seemed like the morning’s lifting mist, so easily 
forgotten. The law of Moses was the instruc- 
tion which Israel needed for character and nation 
building. “He taught,”’ or “thou shalt teach,”’ 
are the recurrent phrases in his books. In time 
of doubt and hours of need the people turned to 


16 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the prophets to know the truth and the way. 
Said Jehoshaphat on an occasion of uncertainty, 
‘Ts there not a prophet of Jehovah here?” Saul’s 
servant turned his master’s attention to Samuel, 
who could tell them all things. In Israel’s new 
age, when a king was now to reign, Samuel the 
prophet wrote the manner of the kingdom for 


them (I Samuel /0). 


3. The prophets were the national leaders in 
reformations, in national peril, in all great crises 
in general. Moses led them victorious into Ca- 
naan. Samuel brought them out of bondage to 
the Philistines. David welded the jealous tribes 
into national unity. Elijah led a revolt against 
the corrupting sensualism of Baalism, Elisha, his 
successor, cheering Jehu on in his effort to root 
Baal worship out of Israel. Isaiah was a tower 
of strength in Assyrian invasion. And Haggai 
and Zechariah made the people strong to rebuild 
the House of God. In every crisis a prophet 
arose; in every forward movement a prophet led. 


4. The prophet stood in a peculiarly intimate 
relation to God, and as the friend of God was 
given to know the secret of His will. ‘Shall I 
hide from Abraham my friend?” said Jehovah 
about the destruction of Sodom. ‘Jehovah will 
do nothing except He reveal it to his servants 
the prophets” (Amos 3). And so being given 
some knowledge of the will of God they were 
sent as His messengers to make known His will 


SURVEY OF PROPHETICAL LITERATURE 17 


to His people. Jonah was given a message to 
Nineveh, corrupt mistress of the world. Isaiah’s 
call to go with God’s message to Israel is a classic 
of prophetic vocation. ‘These men were ambassa- 


dors for God, as though God did beseech men 
through them. 


5. [he prophets were the moral and spiritual 
eyes and consciences of their day. They reasoned 
of righteousness and of judgment to come. Moses 
codified eternal truth and right in legal phrases, 
which can never be forgotten. Isaiah opened up 
to his age, and to all ages, a vision of moral ex- 
cellence and of spiritual fineness, which cannot 
cease to be uplifting. 


6. But while all of these phases of prophetic 
vision and endeavor are of the greatest interest, 
it is not the purpose of this course of studies to 
enter into any of them. There is yet another 
field of prophetic ministry, of more value and 
interest to the Christian than any of these others. 
It has been a strangely neglected phase of prop- 
hecy. This special and important element in 
prophecy which we are to consider is the prophet’s \- 
power to foretell, his vision of the future, his 
message of Messiah and His reign. While this 
is not the all of prophecy, it is an important part 
of prophecy, especially for the Christian, who 
holds in his hand the New Testament, complete 
answer to all Old Testament prophetic yearnings, 
and the filling of its outstretched hands. 


CHAPTER TWO 


THE NEW TESTAMENT, VIEW 2O8 
PRO PE Gey 


HE clearest light ever thrown upon the 

ancient prophecies shines from the New Tes- 
tament. It will therefore be helpful to us, if we 
consider, before going further, the attitude taken 
by New Testament preachers and writers toward 
the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. 
This is not anticipating the conclusion, nor a beg- 
ging of the question. The Christian student, 
with his confidence in the authority and accuracy 
of the New Testament, has the right to begin 
his argument with it; and more than this, it is his 
bounden duty.to do so. The New Testament is 
the best guide ever offered for a journey of inves- 
tigation into the Old because: 


(1) It is in a position to give the best view 
possible, having been written out of a real expe- 
rience of religion so near to Old Testament days. 
Its point of view, its doctrinal formule, its vocab- 
ulary and illustrations are all those of the Old 
Testament. The writers of all its books, prob- 
ably not excepting Luke, were Jews. They were 
learned in all the knowledge and traditions of 
their nation and had in their own souls the ine- 
radicable yearning of their race. 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 19 


(2) Like a telescope, the New Testament 
brings the ancient promises nearer to us, making 
their outline and atmosphere clear and real. It 
would be just as foolish to plead that the astrono- 
mer must learn all about a star with limited 
natural vision and mere theoretical study, before 
turning the lenses of his great telescope upon it, 
as to refuse the aid of New Testament saints for 
the better understanding of Old Testament seers. 


(3) The New Testament rightly claims to be 
the true interpretation of the Old. And all 
succeeding time has increasingly justified this 
claim. When the Woman of Samaria shifted the 
conversation to the Old Testament hope of the 
Messiah, expected by both Samaritan and Jew, 
Jesus said: “I that speak unto thee am He’ 
(John #4). To John, inquiring “Art Thou He 
that should come ?’’ Jesus sent back an affirmative 
answer in phrases of Isaiah (Matt. //). Paul 
in describing its interpretative value, as opening 
to view the hidden mysteries of the Old Testa- 
ment, said well and with finality “in Christ the 
veil is done away” (II Cor. 3). 


We must not fail to keep in mind the nature 
and extent of the Holy Bible, which the New 
Testament writers read and loved. It seems 
foolish that we need to recall, and yet so we 
must, that they did not have our New Testament 
books, but only those of the Old Testament. How 
much more blessed are we in the possession of 


20 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the grace and glory of the New as well as of the 
wisdom and wonder of the Old! But exactly as 
we love the New, and look in faith to it, so also 
did they love and use the Old. Minor questions 
of criticism, as to whether Christ did, or did not, 
affirm the historicity of Jonah in His quotation 
from that book, or as to the unity of Isaiah when 
the second part is quoted as “Isaiah saith” (as 
in Romans 10 and 15), shrivel into insignificance 
before the ever-present love and reverence of 
Christ and His apostles for the Old Testament. 
All through the pages of the New Testament we 
have impressed upon us the devotion and conf- 
dence with which they looked to it, and used it. 


This is a fact of Scripture which modern, easy- 
going criticism needs to ponder more seriously. 
The attitude of the Master, and of those who 
learned from Him, toward the Old Testament is 
quite different from the supercilious attitude of 
our modern schoolmen. To them these old books 
were “The Scriptures,” their Floly Bible, the very 
Word of God. We may with profit, now, con- 
sider their method of handling the prophecies, 
which were the cherished promises of their Bible. 

1. The Method of John the Apostle. In Reve- 
lation 19:10 we read: “‘the witness of Jesus is the 
spirit of prophecy.’ John had been beholding 
the marvels of the Divine operation among men, 
under angel guidance (Rev. 17:1). So over- 
whelmed was he with the wonder and glory of 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY P| 


it, that he fell down in worship before the angel. 
But the angel said: ‘‘See thou do it not; I am a 
fellow-servant with thee, and with thy brethren 
that have the testimony of Jesus, worship God; 
for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of proph- 
ecy.” The witness to Jesus by angels, apostles 
and martyrs is the same as the witness of proph- 
ecy. Prophets and apostles and angels are at one 
in proclaiming Jesus. 


Other illustrations of John’s method may prop- 
erly be considered under the method in which 
Jesus appealed to prophecy (see 5 below), as 
recorded in the Gospel of John. 


2. The Method of Philip the Evangelist. No in- 
cident of the New Testament attitude toward 
prophecy is more in point and more illuminating 
than Philip’s meeting with the Jewish Prime 
Minister of Candace, Queen of Abyssinia. This 
Jew had been to Jerusalem, after the custom of 
his people, to attend one of the great Jewish 
festivals. Strange and heated discussions had 
met him in the holy city of his fathers. One 
called Jesus, of Galilee, claiming to be Messiah, 
had been put to death on the cross for blasphemy 
and treason, for he claimed to be both king and 
Son of God. But it was reported that on the 
third day He rose from the tomb, and had 
ascended on high to glory with the Father, and 
His disciples were boldly proclaiming everywhere 
His Deity, and that in Him the promises of the 


22 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Scriptures were fulfilled. The festal visitor had 
procured a copy of the Prophets to read, for 
himself, and so eager was his interest, he could 
not wait until his return to his southern home, 
but was reading aloud from Isaiah as he jour- 
neyed in his chariot. Philip, led of the Spirit, 
comes upon him near Gaza, as he was reading in 
the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, at the Providen- 
tial, not the psychological, moment. Seeing per- 
plexity in the eunuch’s face, Philip could well ask, 
‘‘Understandest thou what thou readest?” Then 
as together they read onward and came, in verses 
7 and 8, to the atoning death of the Servant 
Messiah, the eunuch’s perplexity came to utter- 
ance in a significant question, “Of whom speaketh 
the prophet this? of himself, or of some other 
man?” We cannot but notice that in his mind 
there is no thought of a suffering nation nor of 
a “suffering abstraction.” It is of a person the 
prophet speaks, and who can this strange person 
be? 

Philip’s great hour had come. The veil was 
being pushed aside; and beginning at this Scrip- 
ture, he announced to him the glad tidings of 
Jesus. If every Jew today could put aside his 
absurd prepossession of Messianic nationalism 
and could read this chapter of Isaiah with prayer 
and the Spirit’s help, he too, out of a joyful con- 
version, would crave and claim the water of 
baptism. 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 23 


3. The Method of Paul. The larger part of the 
New Testament is the product of actual Pauline 
authorship, or of Pauline influence, if under the 
latter statement we included the two books of 
Luke. No New Testament writer used more 
habitually, and appealed more often to, the Old 
Testament. His writings are saturated with the 
Old Testament, with its doctrines, its ideals, and 
its phrases. His letters might be called inter- 
pretations of the Old Testament in terms of 
Jesus Christ, even though he wrote chiefly to 
Gentiles. It should not surprise us, then, to find 
how frequently he appealed to the Messianic 
prophecies in order to present Jesus as Saviour. 
He believed firmly in the Divine authorship and 
authority of the Old Testament, putting his faith 
into expression in the words of that well-known 
passage, the most satisfactory rendering of which 
may be given thus: “Every Scripture being God- 
inspired is also profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for education in righteousness, that 
the man of God may be complete, for every good 
work completely equipped” (II Tim. 3:16-17). 
Paul does not here put any condition on inspira- 
tion, for he does not say, “‘if it is inspired.” Nor 
does he intimate that some Scriptures are inspired 
and some are not. Such ideas are not compatible 
with text or context. He simply makes a cate- 
gorical statement of the inspiration of the Old 


24+ THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Testament, those Holy Scriptures in which Tim- 
othy had been trained since childhood. 


This firm faith of Paul in the divine inspiration 
and authority of the Old Testament will give the 
more emphasis to his appeal to its prophecies as 
fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Only two or three in- 
stances of his many appeals to the Old Testament 
messages of Christ may be, for the lack of space, 
considered here. 

During his first missionary journey, through 
Asia Minor, in his sermon at Antioch, which was 
so characteristic of his missionary message, and 
of such signal ability, that it has been kept on 
record, these were his words: ‘We declare unto 
you glad tidings, how that the promise which was 
made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the 
same unto us their children, in that he hath raised 
up Jesus again, as also it is written in the Second 


Psalm.” (Acts 13,:32-33.) 


On another occasion, one of the most critical 
and most august of his great career, he follows 
the same method of appeal to the Old Testament. 
He was standing before Festus, the Roman gov- 
ernor, and Agrippa, King of the Jews, to make 
defense, not of himself, but of the Gospel which 
he preached. Knowing that Agrippa had been 
trained in the Scriptures, and was considered 
learned in the Law, Paul could appeal to the Old 
Testament, as common ground. And these are 
his remarkable words: “Having obtained help of 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 25 


God I continue unto this day, witnessing both to 
small and great, and saying none other things 
than those which the prophets and Moses did say 
should come: that Christ should suffer, and that 
He should be the first that should rise from the 
dead, and should show light unto the people, and 
to the Gentiles’ (Acts 26:22-23). 

A final quotation will suffice as the clearest and 
most characteristic specimen of Paul’s method. 
On his second missionary journey he had come to 
Thessalonica, where there were many Jews with 
their synagogue. ‘“‘And Paul, as his custom was, 
went in unto them, and for three Sabbath days 
reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, ex- 
pounding and setting before them, that Christ 
must needs have suffered and risen again from 
the dead, and that (said he) this Jesus, whom I 
preach unto you, is the Christ (Acts /7:2-3). 


From these examples of Paul’s ministry of the 
good tidings of prophetic fulfillment in Jesus 
Christ, it is natural that we turn with new and 
sincerer appreciation to his own comprehensive 
description of his ministry in Corinth: “I deter- 


mined not to know anything among you, save 
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” 


4. The Method of Peter. His sermon at Pent- 
ecost, the first Gospel sermon, was based entirely 
on prophecies of the Old Testament: First, the 
outpouring of the Spirit, as foretold by Joel; then 
the resurrection of Christ, from the sixteenth 


26 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Psalm; and finally His exaltation to power at the 
right hand of God, as prophesied by David in 
Psalm 110—not the customary homiletical order 
of one text and three heads, but a greater sermon 
with one Head, even Jesus, and three texts. 


In his second sermon, on record in Acts 3, he 
makes his appeal, in the same way, for acceptance 
of Jesus as the Christ of the Old Testament: 
“those things which God before had showed by 
the mouth of all the prophets, that the Christ 
should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” 


But the most important illustration of Peter’s 
method will be found in his second letter, the first 
chapter, in which seeing his life hastening to its 
earthly close, he makes his last spiritual will and 
testament. We cannot do better than let his 
surprising words speak for themselves: “I think 
it meet to stir you up, by putting you in remem- 
brance; knowing that shortly I must put off this 
my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath 
showed me. For we have not followed cunningly 
devised fables, when we made known unto you 
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
but were eye-witnesses of His majesty. For He 
received from God the Father honor and glory, 
when there came such a voice to Him from the 
resplendent glory: This is My Beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased. And this voice which 
came from Heaven we heard, when we were with 
Him in the holy mount.” 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 27 


Here, Peter is giving his testimony as an eye- 
witness to the revelation and proof of Christ's 
majesty, when heaven came down to earth on the 
Mount of Transfiguration. Could any witness, 
or any proof, be more decisive and acceptable 
than the testimony of those who saw and heard? 

Yet there is another witness, and one of more 
convincing authority, and to this Peter then turns. 
In addition to the testimony of eye-witnesses, “‘we 
have also a more sure word of prophecy.” The 
essential meaning of these remarkable words 1s 
not changed by the optional translation, ‘“‘we have 
the word of prophecy made more sure’’ (by the 
witness of those who saw and heard the Christ) ; 
for the Apostle in either case is making his final 
and decisive appeal for Christ to the Old Testa- 
ment Prophecies. ‘This is passing strange to us, 
who value the New Testament above the Old. But 
not so with Peter; and strange as it may seem, 
there it stands written; prophecy even more sure 
than the wonderful word of those who saw: “And 
we have a more sure word of prophecy, where- 
unto ye do well that ye take heed (as unto a light 
shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and 
the day star arise in your hearts), knowing this 
first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any 
private interpretation; for prophecy came not in 
old time by the will of man; but borne along 
by the Holy Spirit, holy men of God spoke.” 
Prophecy was not to be understood locally, or 


28 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


privately, or temporally, as fulfilled in David, or 
Zerubbabel, or Israel, but as the witness to Jesus 


Christ the Messiah. 


We cannot escape a sense of regret that the 
Old Testament name for the Expected One, the 
coming Deliverer, has been lost to us in the pro- 
cesses of translation. Our word “Christ” is the 
transliteration of the Greek word Christos, which 
in turn is a translation of the Hebrew word 
‘‘Messiah,’’ meaning “Anointed One.” If the 
Hebrew name ‘‘Messiah”’ had been kept and used, 
instead of the Greek word “Christ,” in the New 
Testament, much of the Messianic meaning of the 
New Testament would be clearer to us. The 
question of the Scribes to John would then read, 
‘Art thou the Messiah?” and Peter’s confession 
would be, ‘“Thou art the Messiah, the Son of the 
Living God,” keeping more clearly the close con- 
nection with the hope of Prophecy, before trained 
and untrained students alike. 

5. Christ’s Appeal to Prophecy. If the forego- 
ing array of New Testament uses of Old Testa- 
ment prophecies has seemed impressive and 
convincing, it is not yet all the evidence, not even 
the best of it. The use of prophecy by Christ 
Himself is the most remarkable part in the New 
Testament claim to be the fulfillment of the Old. 
Christ was continually quoting Old Testament 
promises as fulfilled in Himself. Again for lack 
of space, only some of His many appeals to the 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 29 


Old Testament as witness to His Messiahship can 
be brought into this limited study. 

When He visited Nazareth after His baptism 
and entrance upon His public ministry, on the 
Sabbath He went into the synagogue, as was His 
custom. The people of His home town having 
heard of His marvelous words and works else- 
where, came with eagerness to hear Him. The 
lesson in the Prophets for the day was from the 
sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. After reading the 
lesson, with the eyes of the multitude fixed on 
Him, He spoke these momentous words, ‘This 
day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” They 
understood full well the meaning of His words, 
that He was claiming to be the Anointed One, & 
the Servant of the Lord, who was the most im- 
posing figure in ancient prophecy. 

John the Baptist, in Herod’s prison, got tidings 
of the fame of Jesus’ words and miracles. To 
learn if the Christ had truly come, he sent two 
of his disciples to inquire. The question of John 
has its depths of pathos. The stern hero knew 
that his end was near. Had his heroic work been 
in vain? Must he die in disappointment? ‘‘Art.” 
thou He that should come,” he asked, “or must 
we wait for another?’ The answer of Jesus 
turns John’s attention to the words of Isaiah as 
. found in chapters 35 and 6/. | 

Especially convincing are the words which Luke 
records as spoken by our Lord to His disciples 


30 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


after His resurrection. The disheartened dis- 


ciples at Emmaus not only had their eyes opened 


to see the Lord, but also had given to them con- 
vincing proof of His Messiahship from the Old 


Testament, in the Lord’s words: ‘‘O foolish ones, 


and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 


have spoken; ought not the Messiah to have suf- 


fered these things, and to enter into His glory? 
and beginning with Moses, and all the prophets, 
he interpreted unto them, in all the Scripture, the 
things concerning Himself.” 

A little while afterwards, coming to the Eleven 
assembled in the well-known upper room, He 
reminded them how often He had showed them 

“in the Old Testament the very things which had 
happened to Him: ‘These are the words which 
I spoke unto you while I was yet with you, that 
all things must be fulfilled, which were written in 
the law of Moses, and in the Prophets and in the 
Psalms concerning Me. Then opened He their 
understanding, that they might understand the 
Scriptures.” (Luke 24.) 

It is evident that our Lord believed and taught 
confidently that the promises made to the fathers 
were fulfilled in Himself. If conviction can be 
made more sure, it will be so through a final and 
crowning passage. 

The fifth chapter of the Gospel according to 
John contains Christ’s argument for His Deity, 
when His declaration of it had been challenged 


fm 


NEW TESTAMENT VIEW OF PROPHECY 31 


by the Jews, after the healing of a helpless cripple 
by the pool of Bethesda. The argument runs 
thus: 

(1) Judgment is a Divine prerogative; and 
the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, 
even with power to raise the dead and call them 
to judgment. 


(2) John gave true witness to Him, and he 
was a burning and shining light. 


(3) The works, which He did, were His wit- 


nesses, seen by all men. 


(4) The final and climactic argument was His 
appeal, here as always, to the Old Testament 
Scriptures: “Ye search the Scriptures, because in 
them ye think ye have eternal life, but they are 
they which testify of me. And ye will not come 
to me, that ye might have life. Do not think that 
I will accuse you to the Father; there is one that . 
accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For 
had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed 
me, for he wrote of Me. If ye believe not his 
writings, how can ye believe My words?’ 

Here, on the witness of our Lord and His 
Apostles, we are willing to rest our argument, 
that the New Testament always maintained the 
Messianic purpose of the Old Testament, and 
claimed to be its adequate fulfillment. New Tes- 
tament saints are the best interpreters of Old 
Testament seers. 


CHAP TERT LHREE 


PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF 
INTERPRETATION 


ROPHECY, since its utterance, has fallen 

among many widely varying interpreters, liter- 
ally to suffer many things at their hands. ‘These 
varieties of interpretation run all the scale be- 
tween the extremes of literalism and allegorism, 
of mechanistic formalism and rationalistic repudi- 
ation. It may help us on our way to consider 
briefly some of these methods of interpretation. 
Without committing ourselves to follow any one 
of these methods, we may reject error in each, 
and take suggestions from all. The following are 
merely suggestive and typical phases of interpre- 
tation, chosen out of the many. 

1. The Literalistic view of prophecy, which 
holds that every word and idea in a given prop- 
hecy must have a Messianic interpretation found 
for it. The same literalism requires a special 
meaning for every word, or element, of the New 
Testament parables. Not only the fundamental 
idea of the growing, expanding mustard seed, but 
also the branches and birds are to have literal 
interpretation. ‘To some literalists the moral 
symbolism of the leaven has more meaning than 
its expanding and pervading process. Such literal- 
ism, taking a lyric message of Isaiah or an apoca- 


PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 33 


lypse of Ezekiel, will seek to behold not a noble 
synthetic picture but a variety of constituent de- 
tails, with individualistic or egoistic conception of 
each detail. Consequently, a thousand different 
minds will find a thousand different interpreta- 
tions. It is not necessary, for example, to specu- 
late on the difference between the “‘girdle of his 
waist’ and the “‘girdle of his loins” in Isaiah // :4, 
or to give prophetic value to each beast in the 
immediately following picture of peace on earth 
and good will between man and beast. Every 
foot, furlong, door or window of Ezekiel’s vision 
(40-48), does not require private explanation in 
order to the prophetic completeness of the Messi- 
anic message. The Old Testament is a book o 
surpassing imagery; its literary adornment of 
beauty is beyond compare. The gold which Solo- 
mon lavished upon the temple was not richer than 
the wealth of illustrative and figurative beauty, 
which the inspired writers poured into their mes- 
sage. We must not forget this. Passion for 
literal detail may cost the loss of the vision of 
beauty. Busy with this and with that, one can 
miss the heart of the Old Testament. There is 
a sane midway ground; if you will, literal, but 
not too literal. 

2. Near akin to the preceding method of inter- 
pretation is that view of prophecy, which might 
be called mechanical and direct. Its adherents 
suppose that the prophet was entirely dissociated 


34 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


from his own time and conditions; and, whether 
wittingly or unwittingly, transported himself to a 
distant age, and outlined the events and persons 
of that distant age, without relation of any kind 
whatsoever to his own day and its needs. 


Eve, then, had no thought for her own peril 
and sorrow, but was to fix her eye on a cross 
thousands of years away in time. ,/The Immanuel 
“sign had no direct relation to Ahaz and Isaiah 
and the national crisis then impending, but was 
written by Isaiah, in order that Matthew might 
quote it more than seven hundred years later. 
And, in this view, David did not give any thought 
to his son Solomon in the covenant and sure 
mercies of II Samuel 7 and Psalm 72, but was 
busied and satisfied entirely with events, which 
he knew must tarry for a thousand years. 


If I have written with over-emphasis, possibly 
with exaggeration, it has been done consciously, 
to make clear an error, not to give comfort to the 
other extreme of interpretation, which would deny 
the possibility of the vision of the future, and 
reduce prophecy to the thin, hollow shell of envi- 
ronmental temperamentalism. 

As a matter of fact, rationalism in interpreta- 
tion was a revolt from the formalism and un- 
reality of the older mechanical method, which 
prevailed some generations ago. The radical 
called the old formal method “inverted history,” 
meaning that David, Ezekiel or Daniel really 


PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 35 


wrote history, as it were, upside down. We can 
take the revolt of rationalism to heart, and profit 
thereby, without wandering away after it into 
devious paths. A mechanical method of inter- 
pretation is untrue and unfair to both contents 
and spirit of the Old Testament. Its unnecessary 
assumptions lay a heartless and useless load on 


the bent back of docile faith. 


3. The opposite extreme, referred to just 
above, of the mechanical method may be called 
the Historical and Rationalistic view of prophecy. 
According to this view, all prophecy must be ex- 
plained in terms of historical occasion or local 
condition. It is part of a general theory which 
holds that the Old Testament is the record of a 
natural evolution of a people in religious con- 
sciousness and expression, and every phenomenon 
must be submitted to natural explanation. . The 
mind of him who spoke or wrote could not rise 
above the level of his own age and condition. 
Therefore, foretelling the future by such as yet 
undevoloped men is among the things unthink- 


able. 


A queer freak of this school of natural develop- 
ment is its assignment of the apex of spiritual 
excellence and attainment to the period of the 
Maccabeans, when, with Canon Cheyne, the 
glorious Psalms were born and sung. Why this 
should be thought to be true, no sane mind can 
tell; and yet radical criticism jogs on with this 


36 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


* queer fancy at the back of its thick skull. The 
fallacy of radical criticism lies less in literary 
dissections than in the unsustained assumption 
that the highest types of literature, particularly 
the Messianic, are the very latest in the “natural 
development.” 

It is sufficient to prejudice the mind against a 
rationalistic view of prophecy that it must work 
over and distort the materials of the Old Testa- 
ment, in order to sustain its contention. If Isaiah 
wrote that in sixty-five years Ephraim would be 
deported, then, Irishwise, Isaiah did not write 
these words of Isaiah 7:10, but some historian 
recorded them after the event. It was not Jere- 
miah who predicted an exile of seventy years, but 
a later historian who recorded a fact by surrepti- 
tious insertion into the canonical book of the 
prophet. If Daniel touches on events of Macca- 
bean history, then the book of Daniel must be of 
Maccabean origin. The real fact about radical 
criticism is that it denies the fundamental element 
of the Old Testament, and proposes to remove its 
vertebral structure. The Old Testament makes 
throughout a clear-cut claim to be a revelation 
from God, who promises to lead His people into 
a future of which He is able to tell them. He 
proposes to lead them onward by the vision of a 
destiny. The framework, nerve-system and heart 
of the Old Testament are prophetic. Who denies 
this stultifies himself. 


PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 37 


4. The true method of interpretation seeks to 
sift the truth of the various views from the error 
which lies in each, and to meet all the facts and 
all the needs in each passage. In a sense, it is 
eclectic, or synthetic, in that it accepts the faith 
of the direct view that prophets did foresee and 
foretell under the power and guidance of the Holy 
Spirit, and on the other hand does not ignore the 
evident historical origin, setting and atmosphere 
of the prophecies. None of the views stated 
above takes both of these elements of prophecy 
into account. But we believe that both are pres- 
ent, and must be taken into consideration, in every 
faithful interpretation. 


Some, who interpret prophecy in this way, 
think of it as having two senses, or meanings: (1) 
the primary, which has to do with the original \ 
historical occasion; and (2) the secondary, which =~ 
looks to the Messianic fulfillment in the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ. In this view, for example, the}! 
Immanuel sign had its immediate significance for 
Ahaz and the Assyrian peril, but its full meaning 
was not revealed until the birth of the Saviour. 
It is not always possible to distinguish these two 
elements with exactness; for prophecy may often 
be generic or comprehensive. 

We may adopt the happy phraseology of Dr. 
A. B. Davidson, given in his Old Testament The- 
ology, and also in his thorough and sane article 
on ‘‘Prophecy”’ in the Hastings Bible Dictionary, 


38 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


describing this method as historical, genetic and 
progressive. Prophecy is best viewed as a living 
thing, growing out of the soil of history and issu- 
ing from the pressing needs of the people; but 
always the same in essence, and having one goal, 
however and wherever found; and continually 
growing into larger meaning and clearer outline. 
The hope of Eve, expressed in terms of her day 
and need, is the same in reality as the noble vision 
of the Suffering Servant, pictured to us in the 
richer words and wider experience of Isaiah 53. 


The prophets used the objects and persons, 
crises and catastrophes, ideals and yearnings, of 
their own times, to represent to the people of their 
own day, for their help and comfort, the hope of 
the Coming Saviour. So Moses could enjoin 
statute and sacrifice as holding within their full 
meaning the promise given to the fathers; and 
David could raise his living zeal for his son and 
successor to the high plane of the everlasting 
Messianic kingdom. In this way prophecy could 
be poured as balm on wounded hearts, and at the 
same time become a heritage of hope for all 
generations. 


_ For the convenient and intelligent study of 
prophecy, it is necessary to arrange the Bible ma- 
terial under consideration into historical periods. 
The following divisions, although not historically 
exclusive or logically rigid, are suggested as a 
working basis: 


PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION 39 


1. The ages before the Flood, Genesis, chap- 
ters 1-8. 

2. The Patriarchal age, from the Flood to 
Israel’s arrival at Sinai, where patriarchal gov- 
ernment yielded to national organization, Genesis 


9 to Exodus /8. 

3. The Age of the Judges, of whom Moses 
was the first, and Samuel the last, Exodus 79 to I. 
Samuel 12. 

4. The period of the Kings, including the 
United Kingdom, the Divided Kingdom, and 
Judah after the fall of Israel, I. Samuel /3 to II. 
Kings 25, with many of the prophetical books and 
Psalms. 

5. The Babylonian Exile, Ezekiel and Daniel, 


and some of the Psalms. 
6. The time of reconstruction after the Exile, 


Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. 


The limited scope of these chapters forbids the 
thought of using all the material at command. 
Of necessity, not only must we pass over many 
important phases of prophecy, but even in the 
narrower field of Messianic prophecy our atten- 
tion must be confined to a few representative 
passages. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


PROPHECY BEFORE THE FLOOD 


ie: the first eight chapters of Genesis we find the 

briefest possible narrative of a long stretch of 
human life on the earth. Should we accept the 
chronology of the Septuagint, these chapters 
cover as many centuries, rather millenniums, as all 
the remainder of the Old Testament. It is now 
definitely understood that we have no exact and 
undisputed chronology of the Old Testament. 
All systems, which have been worked out of the 
same numerical references in the text, vary widely 
in general periods and in details. \ The Old Tes- 
tament is not a book of statistics and human an- 
nals; it is a message of revelation and redemption) 

Whatever our system of dates and numbers, 
the main fact remains, that these chapters cover 
a vast expanse of time, and are the record of a 
most important period in man’s life on earth: his 
origin and early development. Naturally they 
must be generic, not specific, in character. An 
incident, or event, chosen for the record of such 
a long stretch of time, may be characteristic and 
descriptive of a period rather than of a day. If 
these great historic records are generic in nature, 
then also we must expect expressions of Messianic 
hope in these same chapters to be generic also. 


PROPHECY BEFORE THE FLOOD 41 


And so, in keeping with their environment, we 
find them to be. 

These chapters are of early origin. Whatever 
may have been the form in which the early Penta- 
teuchal author found them, they embody the 
earliest traditions of our race, preserved for us 
under the gracious providence of the Spirit of 
God, who watched in tenderness over those ages, 
as He had brooded over the waste of waters. 
These narratives, in consequence, are of the 
greatest importance, although so brief. A single 
ancient inscription may be of more interest and 
value than a set of modern folios. Who reads 
these chapters, let him ponder over them wisely 
and well, for he has before him records of first 
importance. 


In these chapters will be found five expressions 
ot Messianic hope, in characteristic keeping with 
the records, in which they have been preserved. 
Let us take them up in historical sequence. 


1. The promise to Eve in Genesis 3:15 has 
happily been called the “protevangel,” the first 
Gospel, although not spoken directly to Eve, but 
in her hearing to the serpent: “He (the seed of 
the woman) shall bruise thee on the head, and 
thou shalt bruise him on the heel.” The cunning 
of the serpent had prevailed. Sin, sorrow and 
death had entered into human life. But the 
tempter was not left to gloat with impunity over 


the ruin he had caused, nor did God leave His 


\< 


42 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


children to eternal defeat and despair. In the 
dark hour of apparent ruin, God’s word of com- 
fort in the promise of ultimate victory came to 
cheer. This was the first Messianic promise for 
the future. The manner of its giving, in an hour 
of hopelessness, and its way of fitting into the 
special need of that occasion, are the same as in 
the clearest and most detailed promises of later 
centuries. The human family had fallen into sin 
and sorrow. Husband, wife and child must bear 
alike the common sorrow. But out of the family 
so stricken would come deliverance; for its_son, 
in some future day, would defeat the foe, and 
gain back what had been lost. 


2. The Birth of Cain, Genesis.4:1. Our Eng- 
lish translation of the last clause of this verse, 
‘‘T have gotten a man with the help of Jehovah,” 
is possible, but is not the most direct and natural 
interpretation. We owe it, not to the Hebrew, 
but to the paraphrasing of the Septuagint. The 
simplest rendering is with the use of the double 
accusative in the second clause, thus: ‘““And Adam 
knew Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bare 
Cain, and said, I have gotten a man, (even) 
Jehovah.” The same construction of verb with 
double accusative is found in the sentence which 
immediately follows: ‘‘And again she bore his 
brother, (even) Abel.” If so understood in one 
sentence, why not in the other? The words ‘“‘with 
the help of’’ in the English versions are in italics, 


PROPHECY BEFORE THE FLOOD 43 


indicating that they are not in the original text. 
The briefer rendering ‘“‘with Jehovah” makes a 
dificult text, and would introduce the idea of 
miraculous conception, the prophecy of the virgin 
birth. In consistency either we should read the 
two similarly constructed clauses thus: “I have 
gotten a man, (with the help of) Jehovah,” and 
‘Again she bore his brother, (with the help of) 
Abel’; or we should read them more naturally: 
“T have gotten a man, even Jehovah,” and “Again 
she bore his brother, even Abel.” 


The latter and the simpler translation, as given 
above, is the nearest approach to the Hebrew, 
and also brings the verse into harmony with the 
Messianic meaning and purpose of Genesis 3:15. 
Eve believed the promise that the child of TAN aoe 
would defeat the enemy, who had brought ruin © 
to her family. Naturally, when her first babe lay 
in her arms, pure and beautiful, she thought that 
the promised one had come, and in this hope she 
cried out: “I have gotten a man, even Jehovah,”’ 
that is, the One who will be, as the Divine name 
may be literally translated.. Eve was right in her 
faith in the great fact, that the Deliverer would 
come some day just as Cain had come, born of a 
woman; she was mistaken in taking Cain to be 
the fulfillment, which was to be deferred to the 
fulness of time in the far distant ages. st 

This general expectation and individual dis- 
illusioning, which we see in Eve, was characteristic 


44 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


of every generation in the succeeding millenniums. 
Each age yearned and prayed that the Seed of 
Promise might come to it. And so God led His 
people on victorious over despair, with firm faith 
ain the Coming Saviour, from Eve to Mary. 


3. Seth, the third son of Eve, was also a child 
of Messianic hope. ‘And Adam knew his wife 
again; and she bore a son, and called his name 
Seth; for, said she, God hath appointed me 
another seed instead of Abel,’ Genesis 4:25. 
From this verse it appears that Eve, disappointed 
in Cain, had transferred her hope of the Promised 
Seed to Abel. Abel killed, with woman’s unyield- 
ing faith, she still hoped on; and with the birth 
of a third son she held up her hands again in 
petition for the fulfillment, in token of which she 
called him ‘the appointed-Seed.”’ ‘This pathetic 
insistence of her mother-heart is used by the 
Spirit of God, in such eloquent simplicity, to show 
us the saving presence of the Messianic hope in 
those first days of our race. 


4. The fourth occurrence of the Messianic 
hope in the early chapters of Genesis introduces 
a new element into the narrative. It came with 
the birth of the third generation of the human 
family. By that time the penalty of sin was evi- 
dent everywhere in the ravages of disease and 
envy and hate. Loved_gnes were dying, corrup- 
tion was spreading, hearts were breaking. Good 
men in their despair looked up to heaven in prayer 


PROPHECY BEFORE THE FLOOD 45 


that the Promised One might come. In their 
extremity He must come, for there was no other 
who could save. 

This sad situation is described for us in clear, 
terse brevity in these words: ‘To Seth, to him 
also was born a son; and he called his name 

“nosh (Frailty). Then it was begun to call upon 
the name of Jehovah,” (7. e., “the One who is to 
come’’) Genesis 4:26. We cannot fail to feel the 
throbbing yearning of those hearts, and to hear 
their call for Jehovah. This is the Messianic 
note, which is always being sounded throughout 


the Old Testament. 


5. Once more this hope came to expression in 
those ancient days. The times were very bad, 
and men were very evil. Lemech, the ninth gen- 
eration from Adam, felt the heavy pressure of 
the accumulated woe that came with sin. He and 
his age were weary. It seemed to him that if 
ever the Promised Seed were to come, He must 
come soon, before hurrying ruin should overtake 
the world. 

He gave expression to the sore need and the 


cherished hope at the birth of his son: ‘And he 


called his name Noah, (meaning Rest), saying, - 


This very one shall comfort us from our work 
and from the toil of our hands, because of the 
ground which Jehovah hath cursed,” Gen,_5:29. 
Lemech, like Eve, was both right and wrong. He 
was right in holding fast to the faith in the Prom- 


/ 


46 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


ised Seed. But he was mistaken, like his great- 
great-grandmother, in the particular time and 
person of the fulfillment. The “rest”? came; but 
it was not that for which he had looked. |God 
gave the earth ease from man’s corruption and 
violence in the cleansing waters of the flood)\ But 
Noah was saved, to bear on to other generations 
the hope of the coming of the true Saviour and 
Comforter.) 

There is evident similarity in all of these ex- 
pressions of hope for the future. The defeat and 
the curse_came upon the family. In its members 
the family suffered. But the deliverance is also 
to come_through the family, and the hope of_it 
is always expressed in.family.terms. The seed, 
or son, of the family will be its Saviour. Of 
Kings, Priests, Prophets, they knew not, and Mes- 
sianic promises in such terms would have meant 
nothing to them. God comforted them with a 
promise, the figure of which came out of their 
home life. 

For a moment, let us pause in reverence to 
marvel at the harmony and accuracy of Scripture. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 


ITH the flood there came a notable tran- 

sition in world affairs. The Old had passed 
away; all was made New. Through its waters 
we pass from the ancient world into modern con- 
ditions. The same peoples and races, which we 
know now, began then to spread over and rule 
the earth. Geographical boundaries and localities 
were much the same then as now. The flood was 
a water highway from the old ages into our 
modern world. 


With Abraham, certainly, modern history be- 
gins; modern in the sense that the geography, 
customs, nations, languages, religions, of his time 
still continue on the earth. The libraries of his 
day have been recovered. Every place of impor- 
tance in his pilgrimages is known and marked. 
The dominant religions of the earth claim him as 
‘Father Abraham.” Men keep vigil to day by 
the known sepulcher of the Patriarch and his 
loved dead. We shall expect to find in this new 
age clearer and more frequent expressions of the 
Messianic hope. It will be more elaborate in the 
details of each passage, besides appropriating for 
its purpose a variety of figures and symbols. 
Again, from this age we must limit consideration 
to a few of the well-known passages, selecting 


48 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


those which seem to be most characteristic and 
most important. 

1. The Blessing of Noah, in Genesis 9 :25-27, 
is the first of these which meets us in the narrative 
after the flood. Two noteworthy features claim 
attention: first, there is an outline list of modern 
nations, in germ here, and more fully developed 
in the following chapter. It is not the primitive 
family of the ancient days, with which we have 
to do here, but restless, ambitious, growing na- 
tions. The future hope will now take the form 
of national aspiration and election. Like our own 
world since the European War, the old world 
after the flood entered upon an era of vigorous 
nationalism. The Messianic promise_will yield 
itself to_this phase. In Noah’s vision of the 
future the race of Ham, or Canaan, toward the 
South will soon lose its leadership and pass into 
a vassal group. Young Japheth will take for him- 
self the largest territory, spreading north and 
west. Shem, the firstborn, in the center between 
his brothers, receives the special blessing. 


Secondly, this blessing f Shem takes the form 
of religious_e eminence in the earth. The_Jjne_of 
his descendants will hold as their special privilege 
the preservation and final realization. of the Prom- 
ise. His part in the blessing of his father would 
seem odd and inadequate, but for its meaning in 
Messianic value. Noah does not say ‘“‘the bless- 
ing be upon Shem,” but “blessed be the God of 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 49 


Shem.” His pre-eminence will be found in God’s 
presence with him, and in the Divine purpose that 
his posterity shall have pre-eminence, as the chan- 
nel through which the Messianic hope will pass 
to its fulfillment. 

2,-1f Noah’s blessing, in keeping with the new 
age, was altogether national, or racial, in charac- 
ter, in the call and blessing of Abraham we shall 
find this nationalism in general modified by nota- 
ble personal elements. These new elements will 
be inalienable parts of the Abrahamic relation to 
the promise through all time. This call and bless- 
ing of Abraham, found in Genesis 12:1-3, is com- 
monly known as the covenant which God made 
with Abraham. ‘These new features deserve care- 


ful consideration: a Vie 


PM weer upromise asi identinediwwith; thems | 
ancient promise made to the family of Eve by the 
use of the word ‘‘seed”’ which was the_character- 
istic figure in the promise of old. Abraham, then, 
will carry on, where Eve and Lemech had to give 
over. And so Abraham is given to understand 
that he must gather up the broken thread of the 
past by the words, “‘in thy seed shall all the na-— 
tions of the earth be blessed” (parallel_of. Gen. 
12:3 in 22:18). In the vision of Jacob (Gen. 
28:14), the words of 12:3 and 22:18 are com- 
bined: “in thee and in thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth be blessed.” 


50 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


(2) The promised blessing required, toward 
its realization, self-denial and surrender: “get 
thee out_of thy country, and from thy kindred, 
and from thy father’s house.’’ In this respect it 
is not different from the call to follow Christ: 
“leave all and follow me’”’; “if any man will come 
after me, let him deny himself.” 

(3) It involved a life of journeying by faith. 
The goal would always be ahead, never attained; 
but the unfailing Divine Presence would be as- 
sured. It was to be a long journey through the 
ages for Abraham and his posterity, but God 
would always be with them in the journey. 

(4) ‘The Promise was perpetual, to all gener- 
ations. In the days of sin and apostasy long 
afterward, God could not forget His covenant 
with Abraham. An often repeated phrase in the 
later history, “which I sware unto Abraham,” 
always pointed back to this promise of Genesis /2. 
See Jeremiah 33 :23-26, for a reafirmation of this 
promise, spoken in darkest days. 


(5) The most distinctive feature of this prom- 
ise is its world purpose. It consecrated Abraham 
and his successors to a world cause. “The mission- 
ary obligation was as imperative for him as for 
the disciples of our Lord, for the great loving 
purpose of God for all men is shown in the words, 
‘be thou a blessing’ and “‘in thee shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed.’’ Israel failed 
from beginning to end of his history to realize 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 51 


this. His fatal blunder was to suppose that his 
election of God was for a narrow ational end. 
Israel as a nation failed to see and follow the 
world vision; therefore, the kingdom had to be 
taken from him and given to another which would 
bring forth the fruits thereof. God’s gracious 
purpose for all the world is clearly seen in this 
original covenant promise to Abraham. Here in 
these earliest chapters we have laid bare before 
us the missionary motive of the Bible. Because 
the sons of Shem would not see this, Japheth has 
come into his tents. 


This covenant with Abraham for the future 
was repeated and reafirmed in many subsequent 
passages of the Pentateuch. It became the major 
theme of the later history. Some of these renew- 
als are found: in the promise of posterity through 
Ishmael, chapter 15; the promise of a son to 
barren Sarah, 1/7; after the offering of Isaac, 22; 
the promise to Isaac in Philistia, 26; Isaac’s bless- | 
ing of Jacob, 27; Jacob at Bethel fleeing from 
Esau, 28; Jacob on the way to Egypt, 46; and in 
the call of Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt, 
Exodus 3 and 6. In the nation’s history, in the 
Prophets, and in the Psalms are to be found in- 
numerable references and appeals to this promise. 
It became, and continued to be, the outstanding 
expression of Messianic hope in the Old Testa- 
ment. 


52 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Paul’s appeal to it justifies all that we have just 
written: “‘and the Scripture, foreseeing that God 
would justify the nations by faith, preached the 
Gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in thee 
shall all the nations be blessed,’ Galatians 3:8. 


In all of the reafirmations of the original bless- 
ing of Abraham in Genesis 72, it is especially 
1oticeable that all hold fast their connection with 
hat original blessing by repeating one or more 
of its phrases. Isaac, blessing Jacob, repeats the 
promise of national importance, by emphasis on 
the nationalistic phase: “let peoples serve thee, 
and nations bow down to thee.’’ He also quotes 
the curse and blessing of 12:3, almost in the very 
words. At Bethel, Genesis 28, the ‘seed,’ or 
posterity, is emphasized: “in thy seed shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed.’”’ The promise, 
with both obligation and blessing, was one and 
the same through ages, showing us again the un- 
broken unity of Scripture. 

3. The Messianic Promise contained in the 
blessing of Judah, Genesis 49:10, has always 
arrested attention. It is a bright stellar point in 
the ancient celestial expanse. The reading of it 
will quite justify this unceasing interest, which all 
generations have found in it: 


“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 


Until Shiloh come; 
And unto him shall the obedience of the people be.” 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 53 


The rendering “‘lawgiver” of the accepted ver- 
sion is more accurate and intelligible than the far- 
fetched “‘ruler’s staff”? of the revised. Central in 
the interest and importance of this verse is the 
word “Shiloh,” and in its right interpretation will 
be found the key to the meaning of the prophecy. 

There are several different ways in which it has 
been explained: 

(1) It refers to a person, known by this name, 
a name which bears a special Messianic meaning. 
It is then supposed to be derived from the same 
root, shalem in Hebrew, as that from which Solo- 
mon and “peace” are formed. ‘The phrase could 
then be written, ‘“‘until peace come”’ or “until he 
who brings peace shall come.” ‘‘This Man shall 
be called our Peace,” as it is written in another 
place (Micah 5:5). 

The difficulty with this interpretation is that 
“Shiloh” is not a logical derivative of shalem, 
even though Isaiah does make such a play upon 
the word in Is. 8:6, which word, however, will 
be found to have a very different root derivation 
from the “Shiloh” of Gen. 49:10. It may be 
added to this, that neither in the context of the 
verse, nor anywhere in the history of the times, 
is there a word to justify the thought of such a 
derivation. This interpretation is not ancient nor 
entertained at any time by the Jews, but is of 
quite recent origin. 


54 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


(2) “Shiloh” has been understood by many as 
having reference to the town in Ephraim, where 
the Tabernacle was erected after the conquest of - 
Canaan by Israel. Then we must read: “the 
scepter shall not depart from Judah . . . until 
(the religious center at) Shiloh come.” This is 
both nonsensical, if called prophecy, and untrue 
if called history. Judah did not lead Israel up 
to the time of the Tabernacle’s erection at Shiloh. 
Nor could any one at any time see aught of the 
prophetic, or of the covenant, in such an empty 
phrase. 


(3) Another interpretation bases itself upon 
the same understanding of the word as in the pre- 
ceding view. In this case the meaning is not until 
the people come to Shiloh, but that the coming 
to Shiloh will be the guarantee of Judah’s leader- 
ship. Judah will lead until the coming to Shiloh, 
which in turn will be the warrant of his continuing 
leadership. But Judah did not come to headship 
of the nation until long after Shiloh’s privilege, 
as the central sanctuary, had passed away. “‘Shi- 
loh” as a place was meaningless for Jacob’s time 
and untrue in the days when the Tabernacle was 
at Shiloh. At no point in all Old Testament 
history would such a rendering mean anything to 
any one. 

(4) Let us examine the text itself, to follow 
its leadings. So unusual and difficult are its words, 
especially Shiloh, that from the earliest days many 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 55 


corrections and additions have been suggested. 
We find that in the majority of the ancient manu- 
scripts and versions the Hebrew word is not 
“Shiloh” at all, but quite another word. The 
third consonant; ‘“‘h’’ of the word for the town, 
is not found in these texts, where the word exactly 
transliterated is “shild.”’ In all probability it is 
composed of the relative pronoun she, joined to 
the preposition / plus the third personal pronoun, 
together making /6. This is a very common con- 
struction in Hebrew poetry (and Jacob’s blessing 
is a poem), the connection usually being made by 
doubling the “‘l”’ of the second part, making shello. 
It was equally good Hebrew, however, instead of 
doubling the consonant of the afhxed word, to 
lengthen the vowel of the she. In this case the 
result would be precisely the word of the text, 
shilo, meaning ‘‘which belongs to him,” or “‘to 
whom.” 

This, then, would be the possible, even prob- 
able, reading, meeting every difficulty of text and 
context: 


“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, 

Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 

Until the One to whom it belongs shall come, 

And unto Him shall be the expectation of the people.”’ 


In this simple and natural meaning of this 
verse, containing and carrying onward the sub- 
stance of the original promise, all generations 


56 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


have looked to it as a message of Messiah, ful- 
filled to the letter when Christ came, born of the 
House of Judah. 

4. A passage from this period deserves brief 
consideration because of references to it in later 
centuries. It is found in Exodus #:22-23: “Thus 
saith Jehovah (to Pharaoh), Israel is my son, 
my first-born; and I have said unto thee, Let my 
son go, that he may serve me.”’ 

A statement quite similar to this is found in 
[1 Samuel 7:14, where the promise to David is 
given in terms of his son and successor: “I will 
be his father, and he shall be my son.”’ Here, in 
the second passage, the nation, as Jehovah’s son 
in Exodus, has given way to the more personal 
conception as the Son of David, which remained 
the chief expression of the One who should come, 
until Christ indeed did come. 

Hosea quotes and illuminates these words of 
Exodus as he enlarges upon the tenderness of 
Jehovah: ‘‘when Israel was a child, then I loved 
him, and called my son out of Egypt. I taught 
Ephraim to walk,” Hosea 7/7 :1-2. And Matthew 
came to the full prophetic understanding of Exo- 
dus, David and Hosea, when he recorded the 
complete fulfillment in the flight of Joseph and 
Mary, with the young child, to Egypt: “out of 
Egypt did I call my Son” (Matt. 2:15). 


5. The institution of the Passover belongs also 
to this period. It is impossible to study here in 


THE AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS 57 


detail the history of its origin, and its most char- 
acteristic features. So many of these have been 
filled with rich meaning in Jesus Christ, which 
otherwise they could never have received. Some 
of these are: the tenth day of the month, our 
Palm Sunday; a lamb without spot or blemish; 
the bitter herbs of trial; the sprinkled blood. 


In the New Testament the prophetic parallels 
are too frequent for consideration, or even hur- 
ried enumeration. Christ connected His atoning 
death directly with the Passover: ‘‘My blood 
which is shed for you.”’ John the Baptist hailed 
Jesus as the Lamb of God. ‘The devotion of the 
Jews through the centuries to the observance of 
the Passover was the Divine way of leading them 
down the ages to its fulfillment. Only their eyes 
were holden, that they could not see Him, as did 
Paul, when he wrote, ‘‘our Passover also has been 
sacrificed for us, even Christ.’’ Peter also under- 
stood this, when he wrote, ‘“‘as of a lamb without: 
spot or blemish.” 


CHAPTER SIX 


THES DAYS OR Wrap. G Ess 


| this period extending from Moses to Samuel, 

we find an increasing richness of Messianic 
reference, in every case adapting itself to, or 
making itself real in terms of, the new figures and 
events of the age. As Messiah was visible to 
Eve’s eye of faith in the figure of her offspring, 
so the new age will use its own needs and experi- 
ences to phrase and visualize the everlasting hope. 


This is the time of the giving of the Law, and 
the Law abounds in references, direct, indirect 
and typical, to Christ. In evidence of this there 
is a book of the New Testament which deals 
largely with the message of prophecy in the laws, 
sacrifices and legal personages. This is the Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews, which, however, is not alone 
in this respect, for such interpretations of the Old 
Testament institutions abound in all parts of the 
New Testament. Allusion has already been made 
(chapter five, 5) to the Passover. Equally evi- 
dent are the New Testament conception and uses 
of the whole burnt offering, sin and trespass offer- 
ings, ofice and duties of the high priest, the Day 
of Atonement, the year of jubilee, tabernacle ap- 
pointments, and many other parts of the Law, 
which find their ultimate significance in Christ. 
He Himself “‘began with Moses”’ to interpret to 


DAYS OF THE JUDGES 59 


them “‘in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
Himself.” 

In the letter to the Hebrews the author uses 
five words as descriptive of the fulfillment in 
Christ of the sacrifices, ceremonies and persons of 
the Law: 


(1) Likeness, which was used to draw the 
parallel between the priesthood of Melchizedec, 
and that of Christ, Heb. 7:15. 

(2) Copy, found in Hebrews 8:5, 9:23, signi- 
fying ‘“‘tokens” or “‘intimations,” as descriptive of 
the Messianic purpose in the laws for gifts, and 
for the cleansing of vessels. 


Cah ype, of they labernacle in’tieb?s 35; see 
that thou make all things according to the pattern 
(tupos in the Greek) that was showed thee in the 
mount”; and as its opposite: 

(4) Antitype in Heb. 9:24, descriptive of 
‘the holy places made with hands,” which are 
figures or patterns of ‘“‘the true’ and heavenly 
places into which Christ Himself has entered. 

The type, which means literally a form or figure 
or a model, from a verb with the primitive idea of 
to beat or to mark, and its counterpart antitype, 
have had many interpretations, perhaps losing in 
the confusion of exegetical and doctrinal differ- 
ences much of their simple and direct meaning. 
It is best to take them in the usage for which our 
own language has taken them over from the 
Greek. Mosaic laws and things were the type, 


60 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the cast or carved forms, from which the message 
of the everlasting Gospel would be stamped upon 
the page of revelation. ‘The type corresponded 
to, and prepared for, the final setting forth of the 
true. So the letter to the Hebrews teaches, con- 
tinuously through its chapters. 


(5) Shadow, the last of these descriptive 
words, is easy of interpretation and vivid in illus- 
trative effect. It is found in Heb. 8:5; 10:1, and 
also in Col. 2:17. Levitical priests serve unto the 
shadow of heavenly things; and the Law is, not 
itself the true substance, but only the shadow of 
the things to come. 


Every one knows what a shadow is. It is the 
sign and proof of a reality; it is the intimation 
of the approach of the substance, which it fore- 
shadows or forecasts. A shadow passes over the 
placid surface of the water or over the smooth 
green sward. We turn our eyes upward to find 
what substance it represents, or heralds to us, and 
we see the cloud, or bird with spread wings. So 
the Hebrew knew that the forms of his law were 
not the finality. Beyond their dim meaning, their 
shadow, faith grasped and held the substance of 
the promise. 

Two of these shadows, or types, of things to 
come, found in the books of the Law, can well 
be used here as illustrations. ‘The first is the in- 
tercession of Moses for Israel, Exodus 32 571-32: 


When Moses came down from the mount and 


DAYS OF THE JUDGES 61 


found the people returned to idolatry, his anger 
burned so that he broke the precious tables of 
stone, and called for vengeance on the sinners. 
But after much blood had flowed, and time for 
quieting of his impatient anger had passed, his 
father-heart was moved with pity for a people 
who were to him as his own children. His tender 
intercession for them before Jehovah, “if Thou 
wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I 
pray Thee, out of Thy book, which Thou has 
written,” remains as one of the notable waymarks 
of the Old Testament pilgrimage. It is life for 
life, his life given for his people, to win back life 
for them; an intimation, or a type, of the great 
Atonement. But Moses was not adequate for the 
great sacrifice, for he himself was a sinner, and 
not a lamb without spot or blemish. Therefore, 
his offer was passed over, and Jehovah said, 
“Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I 
blot out from My book.” Nevertheless, his noble 
offer yet stands as the clearest Old Testament 
type of Christ’s voluntary sacrifice; and we can 
well understand how “He began_with Moses” to 
teach mep_of Himself. a 

The second type, or foreshadowing, of Christ’s 
sacrifice is the brazen_serpent of Numbers 21. 
When the punishment through the serpents, fiery 
in sting and like brass or copper in appearance, 
had brought the rebellious and discontented peo- 
ple to their senses and to their knees, Moses was 


62 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


directed to make a brazen image of the poisonous 
serpent, and raise it up where all could see. The 
bitten victim, looking to it in faith, would live. 


Perhaps one marvels that the cause of their 
woe should be chosen as the symbol of their salva- 
tion; that the thing they abhorred, should become 
to them the visible object of faith. But this 1s 
quite in harmony with the Bible method. ‘The 
word in the Old Testament for the sin and for 
the sin offering was the same. Sin could not be 
put away except by sin, that is, through one ap- 
pointed and able to bear the penalty and make 
the expiation. Such is the heart of meaning in 
Paul’s remarkable words, ‘‘Him who knew no sin, 
God made sin (offering) for us” (II Cor. 5). 
‘According to the law, all things are cleansed 
with blood, and apart from shedding of blood 
there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). 


Christ Himself took this type of the serpent, 
as the ancient object of faith, and raised it in His 
own words to Messianic significance: ‘‘as Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so 
must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever 
believeth may in Him have eternal life,’ John 
3314-15. 

The next message for our consideration is the 
prophecy of Israel’s future, spoken by Balaam, 
the pagan prophet, a man of mystery, in a less 
degree like Melchisedec. His home appears to 
have been by the river Euphrates, Numbers 22:5, 


DAYS OF THE JUDGES 63 


and possibly he belonged to the order of the 
Magi, whose business was the preservation of all 
accumulated wisdom, and the handing of it on to 
other generations of initiates into their order. 
They were much concerned with observation of 
the heavens; so Balaam will speak in terms of 
stars, just as the Wise Men of New Testament 
times will see the star of the Christ, while watch- 
ing the heavens in their eastern home. 


After Balaam, on Balak’s invitation, had ar- 
rived in Moab, to curse the Israelites then spread 
abroad over hillside and valley, and waiting to 
cross over the Jordan, Balak took him in suc- 
cession to three peaks, from which he could look 
out on the tents and hosts of Israel. Sacrifices 
were offered on each height in preparation for 
the vision and curse. But in each case a blessing, 
not a curse, was spoken by the prophet. Balak 
in hot anger dismissed Balaam, bidding him 
hurry back to his own land. But before he de- 
parted, turning upon the Moabite king, he deliv- 
ered the Messianic prophecy, which has made his 
name to be remembered down through the ages: 


“T see him, but not now; 
I behold him, but not nigh: 
There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, 
And a scepter shall rise out of Israel, 
And shall smite through the corners of Moab, 
And break down all the sons of Sheth.” 
—Numbers 24:17. 


64 THE CHRIST OF THE, OLD TESTAMENT 


Balaam could see the Israelites swarming over 
valleys and plateaus. It was not of them as a 
nation that he spoke, but of one “not now’’ and 
“not nigh.” This personage of his prophecy 
should come forth and rise out of Israel, and 
therefore be distinct from the nation. He shall 
be a king, as-both symbols, star and scepter, indi- 
cate. And he will establish a kingdom which will 
triumph not only over Moab, but extend its power 
over all the nations around, and finally prevail 
from the isles of the Greeks to the far mountains 
of Assyria. 


In those days of nationalism the king of Moab 
was aspiring and planning for the ascendancy of 
his people far and wide. But Israel’s invasion 
had broken into those plans. So arose an occa- 
sion for prophecy to open up its vision of the 
coming kingdom of David, and, beyond that, of 
the kingdom of the Divine Son of David. 


The Messianic_hope was never to lose this sign 
of the star, as one of the cherished representa- 
tions of the coming King. The Wise Men said, 
‘“We have seen His star.’’ In Revelation the 
Risen Lord still holds fast to this symbol of His 
appearing, when he says: “I am the bright and 
morning star.’’ Peter also kept it in remem- 
brance, as his words, “until the daystar appear,”’ 
declare to us. 

The most important national personage of the 
period of the Judges was the prophet. The 


DAYS OF THE JUDGES 65 


judges themselves were really understood to be 
prophets, and were often so designated. This 
age began with Moses, the great judge, the 
founder of the prophetic line, and ends with 
Samuel, the last judge to be official ruler over 
Israel. In harmony with this fact, and true to 
the spirit and method of prophecy, we find that 
one of the great Messianic messages of this age 
was given under the prophetic figure. 


In the book of Deuteronomy, chapters /7 and | 
718, are concerned with ordinances for the officials 
of the nation, who are to direct its various affairs 
after the entrance into Canaan. They are given 
in the order of King, Priest and Prophet. Moses 
himself being their prophet, this office is consid- 
ered last of the three. 


Moses knew quite well the wayward heart of 
the people, and the danger of apostasy and idola- 
try after he should be taken from them. In his 
distress over the prospective danger, Jehovah 
comforted him with these words: “I will raise 
them up a prophet from among their brethren, 
like unto thee; and I will put My words in his 
mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I 
shall command him,” Deut. 18:18. 

Here we have the beginning, by Divine insti- 
tution, of the so-called “line of the prophets,” 
not later with Samuel as is often supposed. The 
meaning of the promise is that in days of doubt 
and danger, when hard-pressed by invasion from 


66 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


without, or threatened by unfaithfulness and cor- 
ruption from within, a prophet will be raised up 
to teach, guide and deliver. As Moses had taught 
and warned, so in the crises of after years, God’s 
prophetic messenger would come among them. 
His voice would often vibrate with the deep notes 
of warning; it might also still their anxious hearts 
with tender tones of comfort. The promise was 
kept faithfully by Jehovah, who sent His prophets 
in every age. Of this line were Samuel, David, 
Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all their goodly 
company. 

But the promise went beyond these noble men. 
It had its final goal, toward which all other tem- 
poral fulfillments served only as resting places 
along the onward way. We speak of “the line 
of the prophets.’ A line must have an end as 
well as a beginning. If this one is tied to Moses 
at one end, it is also bound to Christ at the other, 
who spoke as never man spoke. The New Tes- 
tament plainly declares the final completion of 
the prophetic line in Christ, in the words of the 
apostles to the crowd attracted by the healing of 
the cripple at the temple gate: ‘Moses indeed 
said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto 
you from among your brethren. Unto you first 
God, having raised up His Servant, sent Him to 
bless you, in turning away every one of you from 
your iniquities,’’ Acts 3 :22-26. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


PERIOD OF THE KINGS 


T is not necessary to subdivide this general 

period in accordance with the historical schisms 
or exiles. \Dhe special features of Messianic ex- 
pression in this period originate with David, and 
do not change to any marked degree down to its 
end. David is the Messianic figure of the age. 
With him comes a great_advance in the form of 
Messianic.expectation. He is the key to the new 
forms_and ideals, which are henceforth to char- 
acterize the promise. 

From any and every point of view David is an 
interesting character. He was the best_beloved 
person in all Hebrew history. More space in this 
history is given to him than to any other of the 
great heroes of the Old Testament. He brought 
the jealous tribes of Israel, as no other man could 
do, into a.united nation. He was a father to his 
people, and they in turn requited his love with 
their own devotion in his day, and have cherished 
him in memory in all ages since. All generations 
of Jew and Gentile have regarded David as the 
ideal of kingliness. 

The Scriptures describe him as “a man after 
God’s own heart.” ‘This phrase does not mean 
that David was a righteous man, or perfect in 
heart; for this evidently he was not. But he 


68 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


loved God. He was the friend of Jehovah, with 
a passion for His glory. His royal position was 
a trust from his God, with whom he shared a close 
friendship. David built no new cities, nor out- 
post fortresses, nor magnificent palaces; his ruling 
passion was to gain and save toward one end: the 
building of a temple for Jehovah, which would be 
worthy of the Eternal Lord of the Universe. 


We must not overlook the fact that David was 
a child of his age, an age of sensualism. Philis- 
tine influence encouraged, and Philistine oppres- 
sion fostered this materialism. David often fell 
under its spell, indulging in sins which brought 
shame to himself and reproach upon his religion. 
But he did not fail and fall away forever as did 
Samson and Saul, children like himself of an age 
of spiritual dullness and sensuous urge. His 
Psalms often give expression to the hand-to-hand 
battle which he was always waging against his 
carnal nature. No doubt he conquered because 
of the Messianic expectation, which always seemed 
real and near to him. ( “I have set Jehovah,” he 
said, ‘‘always before me; because He is at my 


right hand, I shall not be moved,” Psalm 16:8. 


Such a man must_of necessity become_a vehicle 
Aihara Sree an WE 

of Messianic expression, a notable torch-bearer 
. TT Herr arasan. ° 
in the long_procession of hope. We have eh 
that in the preceding ages this hope adapted itself 
to every age and condition; that it took the form 
most characteristic of each age, and the color of 


THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS 69 


its immediate environment. To Eve it was seed; 
or son; to Abraham homeland and posterity; to 
Moses the ever present prophet. So with David, 
the great and good king, the hope of Israel will 
take to itself royal purple and golden crown. 
The most popular and most used Messianic 
titles come from this age and from association 
with David. These are ‘““The Anointed,” a 
translation of Messiah; and the ‘Son of David.”’ 
Four centuries after David Jeremiah declared 
that Jehovah’s covenant with David could not be 
broken, that he should not have a son to reign 
upon his throne. A thousand years later Barti- 
maeus will hail the Messiah in the same Davidic 
phrase, ‘“‘thou Son of David, have mercy on me. ’ 
This period furnishes for our working a rich 
lode of Messianic ore. In considering it, two 
parts of the Davidic literature claim attention. 
The first of these is Jehovah’s covenant with 
David, recorded in II Samuel 7. After David had 
rest from his enemies, he purposed in his heart 
to build a house for Jehovah, which would be 
worthy of Him, and glorify Him in all the earth. 
The old sanctuary at Shiloh had long been ruined, 
and the Ark was a pilgrim with temporary hous- 
ing. The king said: “I dwell in a house of cedar, 
but the Ark of God dwelleth within curtains.”’ 
He confided his plan to his friend Nathan, who 
on the spot gave his hearty approval. David's 


70 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


words to Nathan, not recorded in the narrative 
here, are preserved for us in Psalm /32: 


“Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, 
Nor go up into my bed; 
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, 
Or slumber to mine eyelids; 
Until I find out a place for Jehovah, 
A tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob.” 


But at night Nathan received a message from 
Jehovah bidding him tell David that he must not 
build the house. After he sleeps with his fathers, 
his son who succeeds him shall build it. 


But Jehovah takes the occasion and the idea 
of building to assure to David the fulfillment of 
the Messianic hope in his line. Verses eleven to 
sixteen of this chapter, which contain the core of 
its covenant promise to David, are as follows: 


‘Jehovah will make thee a house. When thy 
days are fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy 
fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which 
shall proceed from thy bowels, and I will estab- 
lish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my 
name, and [ will establish the throne of his king- 
dom forever. I will be his father, and he shall . 
be My son: if he commit iniquity, I will chastise 
him with the rod of man, and with the stripes of 
the children of men; but my loving kindness shal] 
not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom 
I put away before thee. And thy house and thy 


THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS 71 


kingdom shall be made sure forever before thee; 
thy throne shall be established forever.”’ 

The Old Testament uses the phrase ‘“‘to build a 
house’’ in two quite distinct senses, each with equai 
frequency. It may refer to the erection of a ma- 
terial dwelling, or to the founding of a family in 
Israel. For example, the Israelites built store- 
cities for the Egyptians, while God built house- 
holds for the faithful midwives. 

This double meaning of the phrase is used with 
singular effectiveness here. David said, “I will 
build a house (a temple) to Jehovah.” Jehovah 
said to David, ‘‘Shalt thou build a house for me ?”’ 
Nay, but “I will build for thee a house’ (an 
enduring posterity). Saul had craved to found a 
royal house in Israel, his children after him to 
sit on his throne. ‘This became a selfish obsession 
with him, and the fear that noble and popular 
David would frustrate his ambition drove him 
to madness. But David, whose supreme passion 
was for Jehovah’s throne, and for His glory in 
all the earth, for him Jehovah Himself will build 
an everlasting house, and make the throne of his 
Son to endure forever. 

This remarkable episode in David's life, we 
may call it the highpoint in his history, could never 
be forgotten. It became the sure and steadfast 
anchor to which-his people held fast in the stormy 
days, which were to come. 


on 


12 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


In the dark days for the nation, when foreign 
invasion brought them to the verge of ruin, and 
their enemies exulted over them, because Jehovah 
seemed to have cast them off, Psalm 89 :38-45, 
the psalmist turned his heart back to the covenant 
with David. But the words of II Samuel 7 find 
a new and richer meaning in the interpretation and 
application of Psalm 89. For the psalmist the 
historical David was gone, and his successors were 
unworthy. But he seems to look for another, a 
prophetic David, one of whom the King David of 
olden days was so clear a type, a Messianic David, 
upon whom help may be laid as on one that is 
mighty. Words of this Psalm added in the midst 
of its quotations from II Samuel 7 arrest atten- 
tion: 

“He shall say unto me, Thou art my Father, 

My God, and the rock of my salvation. 

I also will make him my firstborn, 

The highest of the kings of the earth. 

My loving kindness will I keep for him for evermore: 
And my covenant shall stand fast with him. 

His seed also will I make to endure forever, 

And his throne as the days of heaven.” 


Such words as these forbid in themselves ful- 
fillment in David, or in any merely human son of 
David. They lead the mind directly to a King of 
Kings on an eternal throne, with an ageless do- 
minion. Unless they have been realized in the 
Christ, the Son of God, the covenant with David 


THE PERIOD OF THE KINGS 73 


has been broken, and we must change the words of 
Scripture, which would then be true no longer: 
‘God is not a man that He should lie.” 


This covenant of the coming Messiah, made 
with David, does not disannul nor forget the 
covenant with Eve and Abraham. It holds its 
close contact with them in the use of the word 
‘‘seed,’’ which was so characteristic of them: ‘‘I 
will set up thy seed after thee, and I will estab- 
lish his kingdom.”’ The seed of the woman, which 
shall defeat the serpent; and the seed of Abra- 
ham, in whom all nations will be blessed, now 
becomes the Son of David, a royal person, whose 
throne is everlasting. The hope is now more 
specific, and henceforth will hold to this definite 
form. But we do not fail to see that He is still 
the promised “seed” of the ancient days, the first 
and only hope of men. 


Associated with the Messianic promise to 
David is an interesting prophetic phrase, found 
more than once in the Scriptures, “the sure 
mercies of David,’ found in Isaiah 55:3, and 
quoted of Christ by Paul in Acts 13:34. Isaiah, 
in his gospel invitation, tells his people, who are 
under chastisement, that if they will repent and 
return unto the Lord, He will make an everlasting 
covenant with them, which will be nothing else 
than a revival of the Davidic covenant, ‘‘even the 
sure mercies of David.” Isaiah refers the ful- 
fillment to the future, when it shall include both 


~ 


74 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Jew and Gentile, “behold I have given him for 
a witness to the people, a prince and commander 
to the peoples.’ And Paul interprets this of 
Jesus, risen from the dead, in proof of “the holy 
and sure mercies of David.” 

If language has any meaning, if hope is ever 
to have realization, then the words of the Davidic 
covenant, as found in II Samuel 7 and Psalm 89, 
lead inevitably to Jesus Christ, the Son of David, 
and the Son of God. Read again the words of 
the inspired psalmist, writing long after David, 
who was buried, and whose tomb was with them - 
at that day: 


“My covenant will I not break, 
Nor alter the things that is gone out of my lips. 
Once have I sworn by my holiness, 
I will not lie unto David: 
His seed shall endure forever, 
And his throne as the sun before me.”’ 


Of whom in all the ages could this be true, but 
of Jesus, Son of David, and Son of God! 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 


“| hehe second part of the Davidic literature 

(see page 69), which has rich Messianic 
value is the Book of Psalms. Not all of these, 
to be considered in this chapter, are of Davidic 
authorship. But they are based upon the new 
conception of the Messianic promise, made to 
David, which was under consideration in the pre- 
ceding chapter. 

We would be surprised indeed not to find the 
Christ, who is present everywhere in the Old Tes- 
tament, also in the Psalms, the best beloved book 
of the Hebrews. In it we find the sincerest and 
highest expression of their religious experience, 
and of both national and individual yearning. In 
this book the believing and hoping Israelite of old 
has exposed to us the inmost secrets of his heart. 
It was the hymn book of the nation, in which they 
mingled their hearts and voices in the expression 
of religious emotions common to them all. Would 
we see the faith of the Hebrews at its clearest and 
best, then we turn instinctively to the outpouring 
of their hearts in the Psalms. 

We shall find, as we expected, that this book 
‘abounds in expressions of faith in Christ, and 

_ longing for Him. The introduction to the whole 
book indicates this. The first and second psalms, 


76 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


being without titles of any kind, seem to have 
been placed at the beginning of the book, to indi- 
cate the general nature of its content. The first 
psalm has as its theme the Law of the Lord; the 
theme of the second is the Messiah, ‘‘concerning 
Jehovah and His Messiah,” or ‘Anointed One.” 
In this way we are informed that the whole book 
will deal largely with the Law and the Messiah, 
we might say, with Moses and the Prophets. By 
lack of time and space we are forced to limit our- 
selves to the study of a very few of such psalms. 
It must be remembered that there are many be- 
sides, which are bearers of the Messianic hope. 


1. The second psalm, because of its evident 
Messianic character, has been called the “King’s 
Psalm.”’ There are many other psalms which 
have to do with the king and the kingdom, but 
the second is in a special way King Messiah’s 
psalm. 

It is written in the form of a drama, in four 
scenes, a different persona dramatis appearing in 
each scene. Each scene covers three verses of the 
psalm as found in our English translations. 


In the first scene the rebel nations and their 
rulers are presented as rushing like a mob upon 
the stage, and then seating themselves in council, 
to decide whether they will submit to the discipline 

yof Jehovah and His Messiah. The decision seems 
to be, “we will not have this man to reign over 


99 


us. It is absurd that frail man can discuss or 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 77 


dispute the sovereign claims of the Lord’s 
anointed. 

Therefore, the second scene, verses 4-6, intro- 
duces the Lord, the Sovereign One, as laughing at 
the folly of such pride and rebellion, and affirming 

that the Messiah King shall rule securely in Zion. 
> In the third scene Messiah Himself appears, 
without any words of historical introduction, but 
delivering a message of promise, in the three 
verses, 7-9, which the inspired poet assigns to 
Him. As these words are the Messianic heart of 
the psalm, they may well be quoted: 


“Let Me tell again and again the decree of Jehovah: 
He said to me, My Son art Thou: 
This day have I begotten Thee. 
Ask of Me, and I will give Thee nations for Thy birth- 
right, 
And the ends of the earth for thy right of conquest.” 


Messiah came speaking, not His own words, 
but the words of the Father, who sent Him. “The 
words that I say unto you, I speak not from my- 
self. And the word which ye hear is not mine, 
but the Father’s who sent me,” John 14:10, 24. 

The last scene introduces the author himself, 
who in the epilogue of the drama appeals to the 
rebels to accept the authority of Messiah. “Kiss 
the Son,” he says, in token of sincere allegiance 
to Him. 

This psalm is quoted in the New Testament 
oftener than any other, for it was regarded by 


78 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the early Christians as surely written of Jesus. 
Paul quotes the words, ‘“‘this day have I begotten 
thee,’ in his sermon at Antioch, as fulfilled in the 
' Resurrection, Acts 13:34; and makes a similar 
_ reference in Rom. / :4, ‘‘declared to be the Son of 
God with power by the resurrection from the 
dead.’ Twice in Hebrews the psalm is quoted 
as written of Christ, 7:5;5:8. Andin Acts 4:25, 
the disciples, praying together in the Upper 
Room, quote the words “the Lord and His 
Anointed”’ of Jesus Christ. 


Besides many other quotations, the New Tes- 
tament use of the psalm is most noticeable in that 
it takes two of the names of the Messiah of this 
psalm as titles of Jesus the Lord. These are 
“Christ” and “the Son of God,” found so often 
in the New Testament. Ancient Jewish and an- 
cient Christian churches were agreed in holding 
fast to this psalm, placed at the gateway to the 
Psalm Book, as distinctively a Messianic message. | 


— 2. Psalm 8 is quoted in the Letter to the 
Hebrews as having reference to Christ, ‘“‘thou hast 
made him a little lower than the angels.”’ The 
quotation is made from the Greek translation, 
which is different from the Hebrew in one im- 
portant point. In the Hebrew we should read, 
-“thou hast made him to lack little from God.” - 
David, on the earth, in lowly reverence, was look- 
ing up from frail man toward God. To him the 
wonder of Divine grace is that God has lifted 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 79 


man up, close to Himself, above the angels even, 
who hold a midway point. To the author of the 
Letter to the Hebrews, who is looking downward 
from the Divine heights, where the Son was seated 
at the right hand of the Father, the marvel of 
Divine grace is that He should become man, and 
the Son of Man, and be brought lower than the 
angels, to the plane of frail man. The psalm and 
its quotation in Hebrews take an added beauty, . 
when we consider the difference in the point of 
view of the two authors. If David marvelled that 
frail man should be so lifted up as to become 
Jehovah’s vice-regent in the earth, ascending 
higher than angels; so the New Testament writer 
marvelled that the Divine Son should be so hum- 
bled as to become man, descending /ower than the 
angels. 

_3. Psalm 16 claims our attention, because it 
was used by Peter, in his sermon at Pentecost, 
as prophetic of the resurrection of Christ. It is 
one of the oldest of the psalms, and greatly be- 
loved as its title, Michtam, probably meaning 
“golden,” would indicate. 


It is a review by David of his past life, in which 
he denounces idolatry and idolaters, and main- 
tains his devotion to Jehovah, as his all. The 
psalm begins in the second person, ‘“Thou hast 
said,’ David thus writing as though his soul were 
speaking. It might, therefore, be called ‘‘the 
psalm of the soul,” and in harmony with this the 


80 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


peroration has to do with the soul, for ‘Thou wilt 
not leave my soul to Sheol.” 


In looking back over his life David is impressed 
by God’s constant goodness. ‘The lines have 
fallen to him in pleasant places.” Every enemy 
has been conquered and every danger survived. 
But the greatest enemy is yet to be met. In his 
old age David faced the hour of supreme need, 
when he must enter into combat with death. The 
issue is for him sure victory, for the Divine 
Friend, who has stood by him in all life’s perils, 
will not desert him in the time of greatest peril. 
Victory over death and immortality are necessary 
consequences of friendship with Jehovah; so in 
confidence the psalmist could sing: 


“Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol, 
Neither wilt thou suffer thy beloved one to see corrup- 
tion. 
Thou wilt show me the endless path of life.” 


The immediate message of these words is the 
assurance of the immortality of the soul. But in 
Hebrew thought immortality involved the welfare 
of the body also, and so presupposed the resur- 
rection. David also was speaking not for him- 
self only; but also for the deathless seed which 
Jehovah had promised in the covenant with him. 
This son of his, this glorious Heir, could not be 
holden of death. And in this sense Peter appeals 
to the psalm at Pentecost: 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 81 


‘The patriarch being therefore a prophet, and 
knowing that God had sworn with an oath to 
him, that of the fruit of his loins he should set 
one upon his throne; he foreseeing this spake of 
the resurrection of the Christ, that neither was 
He left to Hades, nor did His flesh see corrup- 


tion.’ 


That the psalmist has in mind not only the 
hope of immortality for the soul, but also the 
resurrection of the body, is seen in those words 
of the psalm, too generally passed over in inter- 
pretation: “even my flesh shall dwell in confi- 
dence.” 


— 4, Another of the ‘King’s Psalms” is the forty- 

fifth, which is unique in origin, and of a great 
Messianic interest. It is an allegory, taking a 
local event of wide interest as the illustration of 
a more glorious event of spiritual meaning. The 
historical event which the psalm commemorates 
was the royal marriage of Jehoram, prince of 
Judah, and Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jeze- 
bel, and “grand-daughter of Tyre.” The real 
purpose of the psalm is, through the use of an 
event of uncommon interest, to draw attention to 
a spiritual fact of deeper meaning: the union 
between the Messiah King and His church. 

The psalm is composed of three divisions, or 
odes: an ode to inspiration, verses 1-5; secondly, 
an ode in praise of the Messianic King under the 
symbol of the Judzan prince, verses 6-9; and 


82 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


finally, an ode to the Church, or Kingdom, using 
as symbol the princess, or bride. 

We are concerned particularly with the second 
t. part of the psalm, the verses which describe the 
' Messianic King: 


“Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever; 
A scepter of equity is the scepter of Thy kingdom. 
Thou hast loved righteousness and hated wickedness ; 
Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee 
With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” 


\ These are strange words to be spoken of a 
mere man; and no Jew could have found it possi- 
ble to make such a statement, ascribing Deity to 
man. Various evasions of this apparent contra- 
diction have been offered. Some would render: 
‘“The throne of God is forever’; others under- 
stand it to mean “thy throne is from God’’; or 
‘thy throne is of God,” that is, founded on God. 
Still others would ascribe the first of these verses, 
the sixth of the psalm, to God; the words de- 
scriptive of the prince beginning with verse 7. 
But all of these explanations are evasive, not 
candid. They are unitarian in sentiment, fearing 
the simple, straight rendering and acceptance of 
the words. This natural rendering is that of our 
version and of all ancient versions, accepted also 
by the ancient Jewish interpreters, who acknowl- 
edged the Messianic nature of the awe-stirring 


words, ““Thy throne, O God.”’ 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 83 


The author of the Letter to the Hebrews in 
his argument for the Deity of Jesus quotes these 
words as those of the Father to His Son: 


“Of the Son, he (God) saith, 
Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever,” 


so recognizing and underwriting their Messianic 
meaning in Jesus. 

= 5. Psalm /2 is Dayid’s farewell blessing. It 
has the peculiarity of having two different titles, 
one at the head of the psalm, ascribing it to Solo- 
mon, and another at the end, including it among 
‘‘the prayers of David.’ This apparent contra- 
diction has the simplest possible harmony in the 
supposition that David uttered these words as his 
dying blessing on Solomon, who, in the zeal of 
the faith of his early years, committed them to 
immortal verse. 

But whether spoken by David or Solomon, the 
great words of the psalm cannot be adequately 
explained, either in the reign of David or of 
Solomon. ‘They describe the coming and reignt— 
of a King of Righteousness, whose dominion ex- 
tends over the whole earth, and will never end. 
Righteousness, redemption, universal empire and 
endless life are the characteristics of the king 
heralded in this psalm. He could not have been 
Solomon, or any earthly king. David and Solo- 
mon in prophetic vision saw the coming and glory 
of the Promised One, who was David's greater 
Son, the King of Righteousness. 


84 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


The Davidic covenant, which is the theme of 
Psalm 89, has already been considered in the pre- 
ceding chapter, and this psalm there brought into 
its relation to the original record of the covenant 
in II Samuel 7. We pass over it here to take up: 
- 6. Psalm 110, which in the New Testament 
was applied to Christ, as the person of whom the 
psalmist spoke, on two different occasions. On 
the first, Matthew 22:41-46, after Pharisees, 
Sadducees and Herodians had failed to ensnare 
Jesus with their wily questions, He turned and 
put to them a question in the words of this psalm: 
‘What think ye of the Christ? whose son is He. 
They say unto Him, David’s. He saith unto 
them, How then doth David in the Spirit call 
Him Lord, saying: 

The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit Thou on My right hand, 
Till I put thine enemies under Thy feet. 


If David then calleth Him Lord, how is He his 
son? And no one was able to answer Him a 
word.” 

The answer might have been natural and ready 
enough, if they had remembered, from their 
Scriptures, that Jehovah had promised to David, 
in Il Samuel 7, Psalms 72 and 89, a son and 
successor, who should also be the Son of God, 
have the power of an endless life, and reign over 
a kingdom without limit in time or space. Our 
Lord’s question meant more than the confound- 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 85 


ing of His critics; He intended it to be a declara- 
tion of His Messiahship, and proof from their 
own Scriptures that He is the Son of God. 

The second appearance of Psalm 1/10 in the 
New Testament is to be found in the Letter to 
the Hebrews, in chapters 5, 6 and 7, which quote 
of Christ, and interpret in detail, the words of 
the psalm concerning Melchisedec: 


“Jehovah hath sworn, and will not repent; 
Thou art a priest forever 


After the order of Melchisedec.” 


In the letter to the Hebrews this prophecy : 
used to prove the superiority of Christ to the 
Levitical priests; for Abraham, grandfather of 
Levi, acknowledged Melchisedec’s supremacy by 
paying tribute to him. Aaron also died and his 
priesthood ceased; but Melchisedec’s was perpet- 
ual. The words, in which the New Testament 
writer describes this type of Christ, show his 
conception of his Messianic meaning: “‘being first, 
by interpretation, King of Righteousness, and 
then also King of Salem, which is, King of Peace; 
without father, without mother, without geneal- 
ogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of 
life, but made like unto the Son of God,’’ Hebrews 
Fi2e3% 

It was with such a conception of the ancient 
and mysterious Melchisedec, that David turned 
to the future, and propesied of the Promised One 
as an Eternal Priest. ‘The first Messianic verse 


86 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


of this psalm hails Christ as King; this second 
prophecy presents Him as Priest. In the reflected 
light of the New Testament we catch the Old 
Testament seer’s vision of the royal and atoning 
Christ. 

- 7. Psalm 118 is held in the traditions of the 
Jews to have been written for the dedication of 
the Second Temple in 516 B. C. The reasonable- 
ness of the historical tradition is well sustained 
by the words of the psalm, such as: 


“The voice of rejoicing and salvation 
In the tents of the righteous,” verse 15; 
and 
“This is the day which Jehovah hath made; 


We will rejoice and be glad in it,” verse 24. 


For this reason it was closely associated with 
festal occasions in all succeeding generations. It 
was greatly beloved, and found in the hearts and 
on the lips of all in times of Jerusalem’s solemn 
assemblies. Twice we find it appealed to in the 
New Testament during our Lord’s last Passover. 

On the first day of that last week Jesus and 
His disciples left Bethany, where they had spent 
the Sabbath, and joined the jubilant throng, on 
its way into the holy city. Over Sabbath the 
people in the city, both residents and visitors, have 
heard of the nearness of the famed Galilean 
teacher to the city. On Sunday, expecting His 
arrival, the whole city was moved about Him; 
and when the message comes that He was ap- 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 87 


proaching, a multitude went out to meet the 
approaching crowd of pilgrims, spreading their 
festal garments in the path of the Royal Pilgrim, 
and waving palm branches. So was celebrated 
the first Palm Sunday. When the two multitudes 
met in the valley, like the meeting of two electri- 
cally charged atmospheres in the sky, their emo- 
tions flashed into utterance; and the words of 
their utterance were taken from this psalm: 


“Hosanna to the Son of David: 
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; 
Hosanna in the highest,” 


which is both a quotation and an interpretation. 
While the Second Temple was building, the pur- 
pose of the people was kept constant by the words 
of the prophets that the Expected One would 
surely come to it, as He had not come to Solo- 
mon’s. Such a hope was woven into the texture 
of this psalm of dedication, for which reason the 
hearts of the Jews turned instinctively to it at 
the thought of Messiah. So it became the natural 
vehicle for expression of their emotions on that 
Palm Sunday. 

On another day of the festal week Christ was 
teaching in the temple courts by parables, and by 
appeal to their Scriptures; but the leaders of the 
nation, angered at His message, sought to make 
away with Him. On one of the days of this week 
it was the custom for children to march through 
the streets of the city, singing the 118th Psalm. 


88 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


It may have been that their voices were heard 
through the temple colonnades where Jesus was 
teaching. Taking the words of the psalm out of 
the children’s mouths, He turned on His oppo- 
nents and said: “Did ye never read in the 
Scriptures, 


The stone which the builders rejected, 
The same was made the head of the corner; 


This was from the Lord, 


And it was a miracle in our eyes?” 


And they understood at once that He spoke in 
the psalmist’s words against them, and of Him- 
self. 

The incident upon which the tradition of the 
rejected stone rests is not certainly known. It 
has been associated with both Solomon’s and Ze- 
rubbabel’s temples. The story is, that in the 
erection of the temple, or near its completion, a 
key stone necessary to the continuance of building 
and successful completion was missing. As the 
design for the temple involved no further prepa- 
ration of material after the actual erection had 
begun, the undertaking seemed doomed. But 
when the horizon of hope was black with despair, 
the stone, designed by the great architect, but 
overlooked by the builders, was brought out of 
the heaps of rubbish, and found to fit exactly into 
its place, the place which another could never fill. 
It is possible that this incident is the one referred 


to in Zechariah ¢:7-8, 


THE MESSIAH OF THE PSALMS 89 


Whatever may have been the occasion, the 
spiritual meaning is quite clear. As the building 
could never be completed without the one neces- 
sary stone, so the nation could never realize the 
Divine purpose for it, without the coming of the 
promised and expected One. But the One de- 
signed by the Great Architect to perfect His plan 
of salvation, had been rejected by them, becom- 
ing to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of 
offense. So the psalmist and prophet wrote; and 
so Christ interpreted. 

8. Psalm 22 in the Old Testament hymn-book 
was the song of the Suffering Servant of the Lord, 
having much in common with Isaiah 53. Both 
Christ Himself and also His disciples turned to 
it when the shadow of the Cross fell dark upon 
them. The psalm is a true picture of the scene 
on Calvary: the staring crowd; the wagging 
heads; the insolent suggestion that He call on 
Jehovah in whom He trusted; the drawn, 
stretched body, so that the very bones may be 
eounted; the pierced hands and feet; soldiers 
dividing and gambling for His raiment. 

Our Lord Himself was thinking of this psalm, 
as He hung upon the Cross, as being then fulfilled. 
For, not in agony or despair, but in realization 
that the cup of bitterness was now being filled to 
the brim, He cried out in the words of the first 
verse of the psalm: 


“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” 


90 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Among the Jews it was the custom to give to a 
book, as its name, the first word of the book; or 
to give to a collection of books the name of its 
first book. So here our Lord by quoting the first 
verse of the psalm, calls the attention of all to 
its fulfillment in Himself. For He knew all the 
things written concerning Himself in the Law, 
and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms. 

It is not possible here to pursue further the 
many witnesses of the Psalms to Christ. It is 
evident that they are filled with anticipatory 
praises of His certain advent. When those, who 
were waiting for the consolation of Israel, saw 
Jesus, these prophetic praises became like new 
songs of joy to them. And ever since the coming 
Messiah was heralded in Psalms, His Church has 
been a singing church. Luke in his Gospel intro- 
duces Him with psalms, Zacharias, Mary, Simeon 
and the great archangel, the soloists, and the 
multitude of the heavenly host the supporting 
chorus. Interpreters may not be able to make 
clear to us all the mysteries of the Book of Reve- 
lation. One feature in it, however, is beyond 
dispute. Out of its pages we hear the voices of 
victors, as they sing the old song of Moses, of 
David, of the Lamb: ‘The kingdoms of this j- 
world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and | 


His Christ.” 


CHAPTER NINE 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 


4 i Prophets” of this title and chapter are 
understood to be the sixteen canonical 
books of our English Bible, called by the Jews 
“the Latter Prophets.’’ Again, our consideration 
must be limited to a very small fraction of the 
material, the rich Messianic contents of which 
would exceed the limits of any volume. Here in 
these books Christ seems ‘ever present.’ The 
apocalyptic angel spoke in the truest sense when 
he said, ‘“The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of 
prophecy.” 

In considering so wide a field of information, 
the classification of this information will aid our 
comprehension of it. The most satisfactory 
method for classification of the prophetical books 
has been according to the historical periods in 
which their authors lived and worked. For these 
men were great figures in national history, and 
their books bear the historical and literary marks 
of their times. Their messages will be cast in the 
forms and have the color of the age in which 
they fulfilled their ministry. To know them as 
they were and lived, will help us to understand 
their message. 


The Jew has always been affected in thought 
and expression by the national and political sur- 


92 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


roundings in which he found himself. In a sense, 
the Jew never developed a civilization of his own; 
he lived and bore his witness among civilizations 
which other nations had developed. This had been 
so well put by G. S. Lee, we may profitably quote 
his words: “The Bible of the Hebrews (which 
had to be borrowed by the rest of the world if 
they were to have one) is the great outstanding 
fact and result of the Hebrew genius. They did 
not produce a civilization, but they produced a 
book for the rest of the world to make civiliza- 
tions out of.’” Never for more than possibly two 
hundred years in all has he existed as an inde- 
pendent nation. He has always been a part or 
dependent of other nations. So in olden time 
he was Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek or Roman 
Jew, as today he is Russian, German, English or 
American Jew. It is natural, then, to think of 
his prophets in the historical relations, always 
descriptive of themselves. 


Israel has always been under the dominion, or 
protectorate, of some foreign power, as Palestine 
of today prospers under the protectorate of Great 
Britain. Three foreign powers had suzerainty 
over Israel in the days of the prophets, Assyria, 
Babylonia, and Persia. 

(1) The Assyrian period extended from 850 
B. C. to 606 B. C. approximately. The prophets 
of this period were Isaiah and the first seven of 
the Minor Prophets, excepting perhaps Obadiah. 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 93 


(2) The Babylonian period extended from 
about 625 B. C. to 537 B. C., during which lived 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zephaniah and Ha- 
bakkuk. 

isyeeuhesbersiany periodubergan. in: 537) 1b.. CG. 
with Cyrus, and continued until the conquest of 
Alexander. Its prophets are Haggai, Zechariah 
and Malachi. 


These prophets will show in their writings the 
influence of the world power of their day upon 
their own people. Often the Messianic message 
will come out of some crisis precipitated by the 
pressure of the dominant power upon the people’s 
life. Isaiah and Micah, for example, cannot be 
fully appreciated without an understanding of the 
problems which the imperialism of Assyria thrust 
into Palestine in their day. 

In the Assyrian period, Isaiah is the chief mes- 
senger of the Messianic hope. But before coming 
to his book there are Messianic allusions, found 
here and there in other prophets of this period, 
to which attention may be called in a hurried and 
outline manner. 

Joel was the author of the great passage which 
furnished the text for Peter’s sermon at Pente- 
cost. It is not necessary to enter into the details 
of the age or historical occasion of this passage, 
since the prophecy is no wise affected by such 
considerations. His book is rather noncommittal 
as to historical setting. It may have been written 


94 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


early in the Assyrian period, or at a much later 
time. A disaster had come upon the land, 
whether by an actual plague of locusts, or from 
an invading army symbolized by the locusts. 


The call to repentance for the sins, which had 
brought the disaster upon them, leads the prophet 
to a vision of the day of forgiveness and restora- 
tion, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all 
flesh, a promise which our Lord reaffirmed while 
on earth, and which was gloriously fulfilled after 
His ascension, according to His promise. Going 
through the New Testament we discover, as in 
this instance, that its notable events were recog- 
nized by the disciples, each as having been fore- 
told or foreshadowed in their Scriptures. This 
unmistakable correspondence of type and message 
with their experience with Jesus was final proof of 
fulfillment in Him of their nation’s age-long hope, 
and filled their hearts with that joy, which so 
abounds in the New Testament message. 


The Messianic passages in Hosea and Amos 
are general in character, referring usually to the 
restoration of a united Israel under the house of 
David. ‘These prophets of the Northern King- 
dom would not let go their hold upon “the sure 
mercies of David,” although their people had 
thrown off the temporal rule of David’s sons, 
Hosea 3:5; Amos 9:11-15. Each of these pass- 
ages has the phrase “in the latter days” or “‘in 
that day” always indicating the Messianic Age. 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 95 


The passage in Amos is of peculiar beauty and 
sweetness, adorning the cherished hope of the 
fulfillment of the covenant with David for an 
everlasting kingdom and a never-dying king with 
the fairest pictures from nature: 


“In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David, that 
is fallen, 

And close up the breaches thereof: 

And I will raise up its ruins, 

And build it as in the days of old. 

Behold the days shall come, saith Jehovah, 

When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, 

And the treader of grapes him that soweth seed . 

And the mountains shall drop sweet wine, 


And all the hills shall melt.”’ 


The description by Hosea in his closing chapter 
of the age of spiritual restoration, “the seasons 
of refreshing from the presence of the Lord,” is 
not less beautiful than the picture in Amos. 

We turn for more detailed study to Micah’s 
Messianic teaching. It is more specific than the 
other Minor Prophets of this period. Its New 
Testament use is of first importance. And _ his 
relation to Isaiah, as contemporary, possible un- 
derstudy, and personal counterpart, gives him and 
his message special prominence and interest. 

Micah, a Judaean, of the town of Mareshah, 
southwest of Jerusalem, lived about 740 to 700 
B. C. The Assyrian empire was at the height of © 


96 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


its power. Israel had been conquered and Sa- 
maria destroyed. Jerusalem had been threatened 
many times. Judah was still prosperous and con- 
fident. But prosperity had brought to it, not faith 
and gratitude, but pride, self-assurance and sin. 

In contrast with Isaiah, an aristocrat of Jeru- 
salem and the city prophet, Micah was a peasant 
prophet, a country preacher. Isaiah knew kings 
and world politics; Micah knew the fields of grain 
and the sheep-fold. Isaiah’s field of vision was 
the civilized world; Micah’s horizon reached as 
far as the farm villages, which lay around his own 
Mareshah. 

Nevertheless, his book is not rude nor bare, 
but on the contrary filled with sustained eloquence 
and beauty. It combines spiritual vision and 
exalted faith with the highest moral values. A 
master of interpretation has said that the highest 
point in Old Testament ethical attainment was 
reached in Micah, when he said: 


“He hath showed thee, O' man, what is good, 
And what doth Jehovah require of thee, 
But to do justice, and to love kindness, 
And to humble thyself to walk with God ?” 
—Micah 6:8. 


He left a lasting impression on the hearts of 
his people; for, more than a hundred years later, 
in the days of Jeremiah, his words were remem- 
bered, Jeremiah 26:18, in a time and way, which 
saved that good prophet’s life. 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 97 


Like Amos, the prophet Micah was a preacher 
of admonition and judgment; but after every 
section of his book given to denunciation of sin 
and its necessary punishment, he uttered a mes- 
sage of hope for the future. At the end of his 
first section, 2:12, we read: 


“T will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; 
I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; 
I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, 
As a flock in the midst of their pasture.” 


His book closes with one of the finest Messianic 
notes of the Old Testament: 


“Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, 

And passeth over the transgression of the remnant of His 
heritage? 

He will return, He will have compassion on us; 

He will tread our iniquities under foot; 

And Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the 
sea. 

Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, 

And the loving kindness to Abraham, 

Which Thou hast sworn unto our fathers 

From the days of old.” 


One of his most notable prophecies, is almost 
an exact replica of Isaiah’s vision of an exalted 
Zion become the court of righteousness and guar- 
antor of peace for all nations, with which the 
latter begins the prophetic message of his book. 
Neither seems to have copied the passage from 


98 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


the other, but each to have quoted it from an 
older original, a book lost to us, but from which 
we may well think that we have yet other quota- 
tions in our Old Testament. 

Micah quotes at greater length the passage 
common to them both, as is shown by the lines 
not found in Isaiah, and clearly bracketed with- 
in the original prophecy by the concluding form- 
ula, “for the mouth of Jehovah of Hosts hath 
spoken it.” ‘These lines are: 


“But they shall sit every man under his vine 
And under his fig-tree; 
And none shall make them afraid.” 


This prophetic vision of brotherhood among all 
men, and consequent peace in all the earth, has 
not been excelled by any ideal or program of 
universal peace in our own day, nor in any other. 

We come now to the prophecy for which Micah 
is best known, 5:2-5. When the Wise Men came 
seeking Him just born to be King of the Jews, 
and asked for the place of his birth, the learned 
men of the nation turned for the answer, not to 
the noble Isaiah, but to the peasant-prophet, 
Micah: 


“But thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, 
Which art little to be among the families of Judah, 
Out of thee shall one come forth unto Me 
That is to be a ruler in Israel; 
Whose goings forth are from of old, 
From everlasting. 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 99 


Therefore will He give them up until the-time 

That she who travaileth hath brought forth; 

And the residue of his brethren shall return unto the 
children of Israel. 

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of 
Jehovah, 

In the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God; 

And they shall abide; for now shall he be great 

Unto the ends of the earth. 

And this man shall be Shalom.” 


The specific personal references in this remark- 
able passage will not escape the most casual 
reader. We shall study some of these with more 
care. The picture which the prophet draws for 
us here is of a day when there will be no king 
any longer over the people, the line of David 
physically and civilly having been put aside from 
ruling. Where shall Jehovah find a ruler for the 
new age which is to come? Remembering the 
choice of David in olden time, and the covenant 
promise to David, the prophet goes back again 
to Bethlehem, as Isaiah, chapter 77:1, went back 
to the house of Jesse, to find there the promised 
Messianic Ruler. His origin, or appearance, is 
in the ancient times, ‘‘whose goings forth are from 
of old.” Some take these words as referring 
merely to the Bethlehem origin of the Ruler. But 
they go beyond this, as can be seen in the added 
and extending phrase, “from everlasting.’’ The 
prophet, looking to the day of the Messiah, 


100 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


gathers up the promises of the past to Eve, Abra- 
ham and David into one Messianic person, who 
will be ruler and Saviour. 


But that day was not near at hand to the 
prophet. There must be a long time of waiting, 
for “he will give them over, until the time that 
she who travaileth hath brought forth.” Here is 
Micah’s faith in the birth from the Virgin, of 
which Isaiah had spoken so clearly. In this time 
of waiting for His birth, His people shall be 
scattered over the earth. Afterwards they shall 
return, and He shall feed them as a shepherd; 
and then they shall abide. 


The distinctive features of this prophecy seem 
to be: the prophet’s expectation of the Messianic 
Age, in which a ruler of the stock of Jesse, the 
Promised One of the patriarchial days, born of 
the well-known virgin of prophecy, in the fulness 
of time, will gather the remnants of His scattered 
people, be their Good Shepherd, and establish 
them securely. 

The remaining words of the passage recall the 
promise to David concerning his Son, who was 
to come after him; the promise of universal 
dominion, Psalm 89:25-27, and of universal and 
enduring peace, Psalm 72:7. The word trans- 
lated “peace” in the pregnant phrase, ‘“This man 
shall be our peace,’’ seems rather to be intended 
for a name, a symbolic title, ““Shalom.’’ In days 
of war and confusion, all men, as both Isaiah and 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 101 


Micah show, were longing for peace. This dear 
hope of his day the prophet puts as a crown on 
Messiah’s head: ‘This man shall be (called) 
Shalom,” ‘‘our Peace,” or as the root of the word 
signifies, the completion, or filling full, of all hopes 
and ideals. The prophet may have caught atten- 
tion for his words by a play upon Solomon, the 
type of the true Son of David, whose reign meant 
peace. Or he may have been calling to remem- 
brance the well-known Messianic title of Isaiah, 
‘Prince of Peace,’ of whose extending govern- 
ment and of peace, there would be no end (Isaiah 
9 :6-7). 

We do not wonder, after closer scrutiny, that 
the Jews always held this prophecy in expectation, 
and the question of the Wise Men turned all 
minds to it. Our Lord also seemed to have it 
often in mind. He warned His disciples against 
wrong conceptions of this peace, “‘I came not to 
send peace, but a sword.’”’ But He also assured 
them of the fulness of the true peace which He 
brought, ‘‘My peace I give unto you.”’ 


With three comments upon this passage we 
shall conclude our consideration of it: 


1. It is impossible to interpret this prophecy 
except of a person. Every phrase in it shuts out 
the possibility of application to Israel as a people, 
or to some general and indefinite Messianic ideal. 
Here in these verses we meet the royal Messiah 
face to face, as He makes His way, sometimes 


102 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


seen, sometimes hidden, down through Old Tes- 
tament history. 

2. It is the bad habit of radical criticism, when 
it finds a personal Messianic passage, particularly 
one having symbolical, or something of apoca- 
lyptic form, to remove it from its historical con- 
text, and assign it to a very late period of Jewish 
literature. But this prophecy is anchored to its 
present context in Micah by the historical allusion 
which immediately follows: 


“When the Assyrian shall come into our land, 
And when he shall tread in our palaces.” 


The enemy whom Micah and his hearers knew 
was the Assyrian invading Judah in their days; 
naturally he takes the well-known power of his 
day as a descriptive figure of the enemy to be 
overcome in the far-away days. Radical criticism 
is always offended at highly spiritual or intensely 
Messianic passages, and removes them out of 
their historical place for some hypothetically 
appropriate setting in late centuries, without a 
syllable of corroborating proof, condemning a 
prophet out of the mouth of no witnesses at all. 
The radical critic is so afraid that something 
might have been foretold in the Old Testament, 
he busies himself lustily to remove all the evi- 
dence. Let it be understood by those who read, 
that the writer is troubled by none of these uni- 


tarian and pagan jmpediments. For himmany other 


JESUS AND THE PROPHETS 103 


great prophetic passages, besides Micah’s, stand 
fast in their historical places by every sign and 
proof. He does not ‘assume’ the impossibility 
of predictive prophecy, but holds to prophecy as 
a part of the reasonable Divine order. 

3. A too literal and purely nationalistic inter- 
pretation may rob these great prophecies of their 
highest Messianic meaning. There is for Chris- 
tian faith (it should be as true of Jewish faith) 
a spiritual Israel, which is more and greater than 
the old Israel. Hosea, Amos and Micah under- 
stood the prophecies in this sense of a spiritual, 
redeemed, world-wide Israel: ‘‘I will say to them 
that were not my people, Thou art my people; 
and they shall say, Thou art my God.” So Paul 
understood this verse in Hosea, interpreting it of 
the Church of Christ, both Jewish and Gentile, 
Romans 9:24-25. Let us not forget those words 
of the greatest interpreter of the Old Testament: 
‘Sf ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, 
heirs according to promise,” Gal. 3:29. In our 
zeal for literalism for the future, we need not 
deny the joy and privilege of present fulfillment. 
While waiting for the return of the Jews to Pales- 
tine, we already have with us the larger and more 
blessed Israel of God. We can be confident that 
Hosea 2 and 1/4, Amos 9 and Micah 5, were 
written of the Messianic Israel, the church which 
our Lord Jesus purchased with His own blood. 


CHAPTER TEN 


(AON AeNog i Oim iielle ay .ROs 


(' the four Major Prophets of the English 
Bible arrangement, three belong to the his- 
torical period of the Babylonian exile and its 
immediately anterior years. The fact of this ex- 
ceptional demonstration of spiritual activity leads 
us to inquire if the Messianic message found 
corresponding emphasis in this period. 

It may surprise us to find that it was not so 
much in evidence here as in other periods. These 
three great prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and 
Daniel, seemed so involved in and intent upon the 
national and moral problems of their time, they 
found little time for the contemplation of the 
future. The nation had come to its supreme 
crisis. Moral corruption from within and pagan 
alliances from without taxed the full powers of 
Jeremiah and Ezekiel to warn and save their 
people. Since, as we have found, Prophecy is 
always true to its environment, and never fails 
to meet the needs, which press hard, we should 
not expect to find abundant references to the 
future in the books of this critical period. 


Nevertheless there are some exceedingly inter- 
esting Messianic messages in these books, whose 
authors were so put to to meet the emergencies of 
their time. A few chapters in the heart of the 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 105 


book of Jeremiah and near the end of Ezekiel, 
and the second part of the book of Daniel, which 
is pure prophecy, offer more fertile fields for 
Messianic expression than other parts of these 
books. 

Jeremiah was the great preacher of his day. 
He has been misrepresented by the current de- 
scription of him as “The Weeping Prophet,” 
drawn probably from his words in the ninth chap- 
ter of his book: ‘Oh that my head were waters, 
and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might 
weep day and night for the slain of the daughter 
of my people!’ On the contrary, he was a man 
of iron, courageous and unyielding, ever facing, 
never fearing danger. He was the one man of 
his day standing out alone and unafraid against 
the popular spirit of compromise and self-interest. 
The spirit of Samuel and of Elijah was upon him. 


The very arrangement of his book is in itself 
a description, or characterization, of the man. 
After the introductory chapter, the general divi- 
sions are as follows: 

(1) Judah’s sins uncovered and denounced, 
Chapters 2-20. 

(2) Punishment pronounced as sure to come, 
Chapters 21-29. 

(3) Forgiveness and restoration foretold, 
Chapters 30-33. 

(4) History of the punishment inflicted, Chap- 
ters 34-39. 


106 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


(5) History of the Remnant left in Palestine, 
Chapters 40-45. 

(6) Prophecies against the surrounding na- 
tions, Chapters 46-51. 

(7) Historical Epilogue, Chapter 52. 


In this merely general and suggestive analysis 
divisions (1) and (2) are not mutually exclusive. 
Denunciation and punishment of sin are found 
alike in both; but the predominance of one or the 
other is indicated by the analysis as given above. 
The most impressive feature of the book is the 
place to which it assigns the promises for the 
future: not after, but before the history of the 
accomplished judgment. One would naturally 
expect numbers (3) and (4) to be given in 
reverse order. But so great is the loving-kindness 
of the Lord, that before the doom falls, He opens 
the door of hope into a future of Messianic ex- 
pectation. This is characteristic throughout the 
Old ‘Testament Messianic predictions. Isaiah be- 
gins the body of his book in Chapter two with a 
promise of future glory for the Zion, which Chap- 
ters 3 and 5 will so vehemently denounce for its 
apostasy and oppression. 

It is with the third division of Jeremiah, Chap- 
ters 30-33, that we are now concerned. With 
only an exception or two (23:5-8) all of his 
Messianic messages are found in these four chap- 
ters. They are given principally under two fig- 
ures: first, the making of the New Covenant; 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 107 


and secondly, the unbreakable covenant which 
was made with David and with the Levitical 
priests. To these may be added Jeremiah’s use of 
two of Isaiah’s Messianic expressions: the Branch, 
as expressive of the renewal, which Messiah will 
bring, and Righteousness as the characteristic of 
His reign on earth. 

(ie etvus, begin with ithe’ last) of these, (In 
Chapter twenty-two Jeremiah describes and de- 
nounces Jehoahaz (or Shallum), Jehoiakim and 
Jehoiachin as false and wicked shepherds, who 
misled and despoiled Israel, the flock of Jehovah. 
Nevertheless, David is Jehovah’s beloved, with 
whom the covenant must stand forever. There- 
fore the prophet turns from these unworthy and 
wicked kings to the ideal king of the Messianic 
hope, whom the promised future will bring: ‘‘Be- 
hold the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will! 
raise unto David a Righteous Branch, and he shall 
reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute 
righteousness and judgment in the land. In his 
days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell 
safely; and this is the name by which he shall be 
called, “Jehovah, our Righteousness,” Jeremiah 
23 35-6. 

This prophecy is not unlike the Messianic con- 
ceptions and expressions of Isaiah. Indeed, it 
seems to be a combination and interpretation of 
Isaiah 4:2 and 53:11, and possibly also of Micah 
hy on 


108 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


(2) The chief Messianic section of Jeremiah, 
found in Chapters 30-33, is one of the noblest 
passages of the Old Testament. The strain of 
confident hope in the future is sustained through- 
out the whole passage. Without these chapters 
the great prophet might be considered a John the 
Baptist of denunciation or a prophet of pessi- 
mism. Here he turns aside from his hard fight 
with greedy and infidel kings and their time- 
serving courtiers to remember the covenant prom- 
ises, which came from olden time, and to take at 
least a glance into the future of fulfillment. He 
contemplates the people as in exile, and so his 
message of good news begins with their return 
and restoration. ‘Throughout the passage runs 
the thought of the covenant and the promises 
given to the fathers, and this theme suggests the 
various Messianic figures, which are used. 

The first of these figures is the New Covenant 
to be made with those restored from exile, Jere- 
miah 37:31-34. The old covenant was written 
on stone, and was broken both literally and meta- 
phorically. But the New Covenant cannot be 
broken, for it will be spiritual and inwrought. 
It will be written not on stone, externally, but on 
their hearts within, a covenant made by regener- 
ation and spiritual readjustment, of which Peter 
speaks in one of his sermons (Acts 3:31) as “‘the 
times of restoration of all things.”’ 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 109 


From the covenant made at the giving of the 
Law the prophet passed to the covenant connected 
with the Creation, to give it also interpretation 
in Messianic terms: ‘“Thus saith Jehovah, who 
giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordi- 
nances of the moon and the stars for a light by 
night . . . If these ordinances depart from be- 
fore me, then the seed of Israel shall cease from 
being a nation before me for ever.” 31 :35-36. 


(3) In the thirty-second chapter Jeremiah tells 
King Zedekiah that Jerusalem will be taken by 
the Babylonians, who at that time were besieging 
it, and that he and his people will be carried away 
into captivity. But as a token of eventual return 
from exile, and of the rebuilding of the land and 
nation, Jeremiah is directed by the word of the 
Lord to redeem by purchase the field of his uncle 
Hanamel, have the deed witnessed and filed away 
in token of his confidence in the return of the peo- 
ple from exile, “for houses and fields and vine- 
yards shall yet again be brought in this land.” 


Again in the last of these chapters, 33, the cove- 
nant of day and night, and ordinances of heaven 
and earth, are appealed to and used as a sign of 
the restoration and spiritual regeneration of the 
people. Inthe presence of imminent national ruin 
and exile the prophet clings to the everlasting 
covenant, and maintains the impossibility of its 
forfeiture. But for us the significant element in 
all of these prophetic signs and illustrations is 


110 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


that they center around a person, ‘David their 
king,” “‘seed of David my servant.” This Person 
is the same as the Messianic personage in the 
prophecies of Isaiah and Zechariah. ‘The clearest 
and fullest statement of this Messianic figure is 
found in Chapter 33:15-17, “in those days, and 
at that time, will I cause a Branch of Righteous- 
ness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute 
justice and righteousness in the land . . . for 
David shall never want a man to sit upon the 
throne of the house of Israel.” 

Jeremiah sees the line of David apparently 
hastening to a physical end. Four kings in suc- 
cession, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zed- 
ekiah have proved unfaithful and unfit. But a 
covenant was made with Abraham, Jacob and 
David which cannot be annulled. Therefore a 
greater Son of David with an endless reign in 
justice and righteousness must arise in the future. 
The prophet reminds himself and his people, not 
only of the vision of Isaiah and of Micah’s return 
to Bethlehem for a king, but also of the Davidic 
covenant of II Samuel 7 and Psalms 89. God is 
not a man that He should lie. ‘Once have | 
sworn by My holiness,” He said. “‘I will not lie 
unto David,” Psalm 89:33. ‘Therefore “if ye can 
break my covenant of the day, and my covenant 
of the night, so that there shall not be day and 
night in their season; then may also my covenant 
be broken with David my servant, that he shall 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE lil 


not have a son to reign upon his throne,’’ 
BocUenl. 

Ezekiel was the great prophet of the Exile. 
He was the pastor of the congregation in their 
Babylonian captivity, called to this service by the 
command of the Lord and by the spiritual desti- 
tution of his comrades in exile. The chapters of 
his book record the sermons delivered to this 
congregation, who were drifting, some into fatal- 
ism, others to pagan cupidity and sensualism. 
After the first two introductory chapters his book 
falls into the following clear and natural divi- 
sions: 

(1) Prophecies delivered before the destruc- 
tion of Jerusalem 3-24. Ezekiel was carried into 
captivity with the deportation of 697 B. C., along 
with Jehoiachin, who was dethroned by Nebu- 
chadnezzar in favor of Zedekiah. These chapters 
deal chiefly with the sins, apostasies and fatalistic 
despair of the Jewish captive colony, with insist- 
ence on the certain fall of Jerusalem, which was 
being controverted by the exiles. The last of 
these prophecies was delivered in 588, two years 
before the fall of the city. Between this date and 
the arrival of tidings of Jerusalem’s destruction 
falls the second section: 


(2) Prophecies against the Nations, 25-32. 
While waiting for the tidings which would con- 
firm his prophecy of doom for the city, whose 
cup of iniquity was full, the prophet in logical 


iz THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


order took up the accountability of the nations 
at the judgment bar of Jehovah, just as Jeremiah 
logically put them at the end of his book. Five 
days less than three years after the date of his 
last prophecy against Jerusalem (24:1) the prop- 
het received tidings of the fall of the city 
(33:21), and with this begins the last section of 
the book: 


(3) Prophecies after the fall of Jerusalem, 
33-48, which have to do chiefly with the restora- 
tion and the future spiritual state and relations 
of the chosen people. It is with these chapters 
that our Messianic inquiry is concerned. Three 
of these messages of the restored and glorious 
future only can be considered. 


(a) The Good Shepherd of Chapter 34, who 
will surely come to save, defend and feed his 
plundered and scattered flock. Jeremiah and his 
younger contemporary Ezekiel were in agreement 
in many of their doctrines, and in the use of the 
same figures and phrases. As Jeremiah had de- 
nounced the apostate kings of his time as wicked 
shepherds, so Ezekiel pictures the day of deliver- 
ance as the time when the Good Shepherd will 
come to care for his own flock. This Shepherd 
is called both Jehovah (34:11, 30, 31), and 
David (34:23-24). In these latter verses Eze- 
kiel puts himself in line with Isaiah, Micah and 
Jeremiah, all of whom held to the Messianic 
hope in terms of the covenant with David for his 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE His 


Eternal Son. This chapter contains the original 
parable of Jehovah as the Good Shepherd, which 
Christ in John 70 explained as fulfilled in Him- 
self. 


(b) The well-known Gog and Magog chap- 
ters, 38 and 39, have been of age-long and world- 
wide interest, and much of mystery has involved 
them. They have been turned to all manner of 
fantastic and fanatical uses. But the prophet’s 
setting and purpose seem quite simple and direct. 
He is dealing in all of these chapters with a peo- 
ple restored to their own land. But the age of 
Messianic realization will not come with such 
physical restoration. After return to their own 
land will begin the great conflict of the ages. In 
Babylonia the prophet has seen the strange 
peoples of all lands, with their queer garbs 
and strange tongues, who had come to great 
Babylon from the west, as far as the wide 
stretches of Russia, and from the east, as distant 
possibly as ancient China. With these new and 
strange peoples the Kingdom of God and His 
Messiah will have to do after Israel’s return from 
exile. So did the prophet foresee and foretell 
the long conflict of the Kingdom of Messiah, the 
Davidic Prince, with the pagan world, which has 
covered all the centuries of European history, and 
has now extended to every continent of the earth. 
Ezekiel’s Armageddon was not a single local 
struggle, but an age-long conflict, involving all 


114 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


nations, with the final stage to be fought and won 
on the continent and in the land of Israel. 

(c) The last nine chapters of Ezekiel have 
been interpreted and misinterpreted in a dozen 
different ways. The radical critic calls them the 
“Taw of Ezekiel,” and finds in them the crucial 
link in the development from pre-exilic propheti- 
cal cult to post-exilic priestly ritual. “he modern 
literalistic fanatic finds here the plans for a mil- 
lennial temple, which is actually to be built at 
Jerusalem when Messiah comes again. 


All such wild efforts at interpretation are based 
upon a misunderstanding of the place and purpose 
of these nine chapters. All of this last section of 
Ezekiel (33-48) deals with restoration from 
Exile. Chapters 33-39 contain more positive 
statements of the people’s repentance, regener- 
ation and restoration. Chapters 40-48 present 
and illustrate this restoration in splendid symbol- 
ical form. ‘They were not intended as a law-code, - 
but used the old known laws with symbolical 
meaning. The temple is only a part of the whole 
symbolical picture. The laws as used in Ezekiel 
could never be enforced, and no attempt was ever 
made to do so. The temple could not be built as 
planned, and the returned exiles never gave a 
thought to the use of these merely symbolical 
plans. So the prophet presents in picture a holy 
restoration and a spiritual kingdom. 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 115 


Central in this symbolized restoration is the 
unusual and striking person, who is called “‘the 
Prince”; 45:7, 16-17; 46: 16; 48:21; not king, 
nor governor, nor judge, nor high priest; but the 
Prince of the people, the Messianic Person in the 
midst of the prophetic symbolism. Who this 
Prince was in the mind of Ezekiel, can be clearly 
seen by reference to previous chapters. In 34:24 
he is called “my servant David, prince among 
them:’; and in 37:25 it is said of him, “David 
my servant shall be their prince forever.’ So 
Ezekiel keeps in line with all the prophets in pro- 
claiming “‘the sure mercies of David’’; the inviola- 
bility of the Messianic covenant, which Jehovah 
made with David. 

The book of Daniel, like its author in his own 
day, is much spoken against in our day. It is the 
common and accepted canon of literary and his- 
torical criticism that the book originated in the 
early days of the Maccabzans, since it seems to 
describe the malignant attack of Antiochus IV on 
Jerusalem and his profaning the holy altar of 
sacrifice. [his view persists in the face of diff- 
culties, which flatly contradict it. The theory of 
the Maccabzan origin of the book, that is, about 
165 B. C., leaves no place for explanation of the 
two languages in which it was written. If its 
origin was Babylonian in the sixth century B. C., 
then we well understand why Chapters 2-7, con- 
cerning the Babylonians and Persians were written 


116 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


in Aramaic; and chapters 7, 8-12 were written 
in good Hebrew, because they have to do with 
Hebrew prophecy and its fulfillment. The theory 
of Maccabean origin is out of harmony with 
such facts as the accurate historical details of 
Chapters 2-6, which read like the evidence of an 
eye-witness; the good exilic Hebrew of Chapters 
8-12; and the older Aramaic of Chapters 2-7. 


However, the date of the composition of the 
book of Daniel is a question quite aside from the 
meaning of its Messianic passages. These are 
true, and turned the hearts of the ancients onward 
to the coming of the Saviour, whether written in 
the sixth or in the second century before His 
coming. And therefore we take them up for con- 
sideration, all the happier that their bearing on 
our theme is not affected by any critical contro- 
versy. We may pass over the dream of Nebu- 
chadnezzar in Chapter two, since its prophetic 
features will reappear in later chapters; while 
we take up the definitely prophetic chapters, 7-12. 


In these chapters two Messianic titles are 
found: the ‘Son of Man,” 7:14, and the ‘‘Prince”’ 
in Chapters § and 1/0. The title “Son of Man” 
had Messianic meaning in the literature between 
the ‘Testaments, and was used by our Lord Him- 
self as a title indicating His Messiahship. In 
such passages as Matthew 25:31 and 26:64, and 
Mark 74:62, our Lord uses it as the practical 
equivalent of Son of God, since He uses it in 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 117 


connection with the exercise of His divine pre- 
rogatives. Already in the book of Daniel, of 
which our Lord was a student, and from which 
He quoted, the Messianic and Divine nature of 
the Son of Man is indicated, for ‘‘His dominion 
is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass 
away, and his kingdom that which shall not be 
destroyed,” Daniel 7:14. 


The Prince is called the ‘“‘Prince of the Host, 
oo hlesances thee lrincer on princes; 1 os25 3 and 
“Messiah the Prince,” 9:25. The return from 
the Babylonian captivity for Daniel was on the 
journey toward the fulfillment of the covenant 
hope in the coming of the Anointed Prince, the 
son of David. 


In all the Messianic passages of these three 
prophets, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, the domi- 
nant note is the coming of a promised and long 
expected person. In Jeremiah He is presented 
as “the Lord our Righteousness,” in contrast with 
the unrighteous and ungodly kings of that age. 
In Ezekiel He is the Good Shepherd, in contrast 
with the kings and nobles, who had proved to be 
false and oppressing shepherds of God’s people. 
In Ezekiel and Daniel he is called the Prince, be- 
cause with the fall of Jerusalem the scepter had 
departed from the House of David, until the 
Greater Son of David, the Prince of princes, 
should come. But in all three the kingly idea or 
form of the Messiah is maintained in conformity 


118 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


to the Davidic covenant, and in line with all the 
prophetic testimony, since that covenant was 
made. This wide field of prophecy, including 
three of the Major Prophets was not barren of 
Messianic hope, as some stretches of Southern 
skies are wastes not lighted by any stars. But 
gleams of light and seeds of hope are found even 
in these busiest and hardest fighting prophets of 
our Old Testament. 


‘And my servant David shall be king over 
them; and they shall all have one shepherd. And 
David my servant shall be their prince forever. 
Moreover, I will make a covenant of peace with 
them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with 
them; and I will place them, and multiply them, 
and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them 
forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be with 
them; and I will be their God, and they shall be 
my people. And the nations shall know that I, 
Jehovah, do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary 
shall be in the midst of them forevermore,” Eze- 


kiel 37 :24-28. 


These words make us feel that Ezekiel saw a 
coming One mightier than David, and a kingdom 
greater and wider than Israel, even the New 
Testament King and His world-wide, everlasting 
Kingdom. 

The point at issue in the consideration of the 
Messianic note in these books is not the meaning 
of the quite elaborate symbols and signs, found 


PROPHETS OF THE EXILE 119 


particularly in Ezekiel and Daniel. Such a dis- 
cussion would carry us far afield, and involve 
controversies, which have nothing to do with our 
theme. The matter which concerns us is that in 
these books of strenuous men of a stirring age 
there appears the same Person, whose footsteps 
we have been following down through all of the 
Old Testament ages: the Seed of Abraham, Son 
of David, Ideal Prince, Eternal King. These 
ancient apocalyptic books are in unison with their 
New Testament successor, the Book of Revela- 
tion, which caught their note and prolonged their 
strain of triumph, as it proclaims: “The kingdom 
of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord 
and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever 
and ever.” 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


PROPHETS OF THERES EO RA Tea 
ERA 


HILE in Jeremiah’s prophecies, considered 

in the preceding chapter, we found a com- 
parative lack of direct Messianic reference, never- 
theless at times he did hold up and maintain the 
ancient hope of Israel, as in his doctrine of the 
New Covenant, in his insistence on the perpetuity 
of the covenant with David, and his three notable 
passages which present the “Branch” as David’s 
Son and Isaiah’s King of Righteousness. 

Ezekiel also, we found, made a rich contri- 
bution to the preservation and progress of his 
nation’s hope for Messiah both in direct and 
literal teachings and in noble symbolism. And 
Daniel gave to Messianic expectation and expres- 
sion the title “Son of Man,” which appears so 
often in the inter-testament books, and so con- 
stantly was used by our Lord of Himself. He 
was not under necessity to interpret the title, in 
order to bring to it Messianic meaning. Daniel 
and successive generations had invested it with 
that; He only needed to use it of Himself, in 
order to assert and proclaim His mission as 
Messiah. 

But the symbolical and apocalyptic nature of 
Ezekiel’s and Daniel’s prophetical sections has 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 121 


involved their interpretation in some difficulty, 
and has in consequence given rise to many diver- 
gent views. This is not true, however, of that 
smal] group of prophecies, with which the canon 
of Old Testament Prophecy closes, the prophets 
of the Persian, or post-exilic, period: Haggai, 
Zechariah and Malachi. These are of special 
interest to us, because in them are found so many 
direct, personal and easily understood messages 
of the Messiah; and toward these prophetic mes- 
sages the New Testament saints were always 
looking back. Living so much nearer the time 
of His coming, and having before them the mes- 
sages of those who had gone before, they appear 
to have been able to see more clearly, and so to 
speak more definitely of, the Hope of Israel. 
God designed, in His gracious kindness, that be- 
fore the canon of prophecy closed and the long 
dim ages began, which were to intervene before 
His coming, the final messages of the Holy men, 
moved by the Holy Spirit, should be clear and 
cheering. 


Haggai prophesied about 520 B. C., in the 
second year of Darius the Great. The returned 
Jewish exiles had now been in the homeland for 
more than half a generation. But the chief object 
of their restoration by Cyrus, the rebuilding of 
the temple, had not been accomplished. The work 
at first begun with enthusiasm, had been aban- 


122 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


doned early, because they despaired of ever erect- 
ing a structure adequate to the realization of 
their hopes for it; but chiefly because the people 
were too selfishly occupied in gathering the rich 
gains coming in from the harvests of their lands. 
Cedar-ceiled houses and a life of ease had dis- 
placed the simplicity and struggles of the early 
years. But drought and famine recalled them to 
their senses, and prepared their minds for the 
Lord’s message through Haggai, to return to 
their neglected temple-building. Ere it was com- 
pleted they were about to give over the task again, 
because the building they were rearing seemed so 
wretched when compared with the greatness of 
the former temple. The prophet was sent again 
t.» cheer them on, this time in the words of the 
_ prophecy, which is his chief distinction: 

‘Thus saith Jehovah of Hosts: Yet once, it is 
a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and 
the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I[ 
will shake all nations; and the desired of all 
nations shall come; and I will fill this house with 
glory. The latter glory of this house shall be 
greater than the former, saith Jehovah of Hosts; 
and in this place will I give peace,” 2:6-9. 

The words “‘desired of all nations” are peculiar, 
and susceptible to several interpretations. The 
rendering above is the literal sense of the Hebrew. 
While the noun “‘desired”’ is in the singular num- 
ber, the verb “‘shal] come” is plural. On this 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 123 


account some have translated, as the revised ver- 
sions, “the desired things of all nations,’’ sustain- 
ing this rendering by the words which follow: 
“the silver is mine and the gold is mine.’’ The 
desired (or precious) things of all the nations 
shall come to the temple. 


Reason to doubt the accuracy of this view is 
found in the singular form of the noun, the early 
scribes and copyists holding to the singular, or 
personal meaning. Also, the personal conception 
is favored by the coming of greater glory to the 
latter temple. And finally this is undoubtedly the 
idea conveyed by the last words of the prophecy, 
in this place I will give “peace,” which carries the 
mind back to David’s, Isaiah’s, Micah’s Prince of 
Peace, promised now by Haggai to bring glory 
to the latter temple. Under any of these inter- 
pretations, the passage still remains Messianic: 
the people’s hearts were braced for effort by the 
lifting of their eyes to the future of promise. 


Zechariah was contemporary with Haggai, and 
like him, sent to cheer the people in their work 
of temple building and national restoration. The 
first part of his book is apocalyptic in character, 
like Ezekiel and Daniel, influencing the author of 
Revelation. One prophecy in this part of the 
book must be noticed: 

‘Take silver and gold, and make crowns, and 
set them upon the head of Joshua, the son of 
Jehozadak, the high priest; and speak unto him. 


124 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


saying, thus speaketh Jehovah of Hosts, saying, 
Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: and 
he shall grow up out of his place; and he shall 
build the temple of Jehovah; even he shall build 
the temple of Jehovah; and he shall bear the 
glory, and he shall sit and rule upon his throne; 
and he shall be a priest upon his throne; and the 
counsel of peace shall be between them both,”’ 
6:11-13. 

(1) The person described in this passage is to 
be both priest and king, and there is to be no 
discord between the two offices in one person. 
Zerubbabel was ruler at this time; therefore, the 
person referred to cannot be Joshua himself, but 
Joshua is used as a symbol, or apocalyptic figure, 
of a coming person, the apocalyptic method being 
in harmony with the context. And further, the 
preservation of the crowns in the temple as signs 
corroborates their symbolical, not actual use. It 
is idle speculation to say that this was written of, 
and in the time of, Simon or John Hyrcanus, who 
were priest-rulers; for the passage is in an evi- 
dently genuine part of the book. Nor is there 
anything to explain why Joshua’s name should be 
used for Simon or John. As in Psalm 1/10, we 
have here again the conception of Messiah as 
Priest and King. 

(2) The word “Branch” takes us back to 
Isaiah, who first used it with Messianic purpose, 
‘in that day shall the sprout (or “‘branch’’) of 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 125 


Jehovah be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit 
of the land be excellent and comely,” 4:2. A land 
desolate and cursed because of its sins will “in 
that day,” the Messianic age, put forth new and 
beautiful sprout, which will mature into a fruitful 
harvest. This is Isaiah’s picture of regenerated 
life in the age of Messiah, taken from the revival 
of the land after winter, and the fresh growing 
grain, with its promise of harvest. This new life 
Isaiah further reveals, 17:1, is to be an offspring 
of David, a sprout from the stock of Jesse. Both 
Jeremiah and Zechariah took up this Messianic 
figure, first used by Isaiah, to give it more definite 
and personal expression. The translators have 
caught the prophetic spirit of Jeremiah and Zech- 
ariah by writing the word with capital initial, 
Branch, as the name of a person. 

(3) Jesus used this prophecy as pointing to 
Himself, when He said to the opposing Jews at 
Jerusalem: “‘destroy this temple, and in three days 
I will raise it up,” speaking not of the material 
temple, but of His body. Had the Jews remem- 
bered the words of Zechariah, they would have 
understood Jesus. 


The second part of Zechariah, chapters 9-12, 
has suggested an interesting question of literary 
criticism: whether these chapters are from the 
same hand as the first eight, or of different author- 
ship. The most prominent feature of these chap- 
ters, which suggests such a possibility, is the 


126 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


similarity in titles, with which chapters 9 and /2, 
and also Mal. 7, begin, namely, ‘‘the burden of 
the word of Jehovah.’”’ Some have thought on 
this ground, that we have here three brief pro- 
phetical messages, or booklets, Zechariah 9-11; 
12-14; and Malachi 1-4, which were anonymous, 
and placed as supplements at the end of the canon 
of prophecy. 

With this question of literary analysis we are 
not interested here, except that it calls attention 
to these chapters and their unique phenomenon: 
that they contain more prophecies of a personal 
Messiah than any other part of the Old Testa- 
ment. We can do little more than cite these 
passages, connecting them with their use and in- 
terpretation in the New Testament. 


Zechariah 11:12-13 is quoted by Matthew, 
27:10, as fulfilled in the betrayal of Christ by 
Judas for thirty pieces of silver, which were 
returned by Judas when he realized the enormity 
of his deed; and then paid for the potter’s field. 
Matthew’s statement, that Jeremiah spoke these 
words, is not a slip of his pen, nor a scribal 
error, but is rather to be understood as his witness 
to Jeremiah’s authorship of one of these propheti- © 
cal booklets. Zechariah 9:10 and other similar 
passages also suggest pre-exilic origin, so sustain- 
ing Matthew. 

Zechariah 12:10, “they shall look upon me, 
whom they have pierced,” is quoted in the Gospel 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 127 


of John, 19:37, and in Revelation 7:7, as spoken 
of the crucifixion of Christ. There is no other 
adequate interpretation of such words as these. 
Without the New Testament explanation they 
could never be other than enigmatical. 

Zechariah 13:7, “smite the shepherd, and the 
sheep shall be scattered,” was remembered by 
Jesus, and quoted to His disciples, in the garden 
of Gethsemane, as having been written of their 
forsaking Him at the time of His supreme trial. 

The most interesting and specific of all Zecha- 
riah’s prophetic messages is that of the King’s 
entrance into Jerusalem, in chapter 9:9: 


“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; 
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem; 
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee; 
He is just, and having salvation; 
Lowly, and riding upon an ass, 
Even upon a colt, the foal of an ass.” 


When Jesus was about to enter Jerusalem on 
the first day of the Passover week, He brought 
to pass the literal fulfillment of these words in 
Himself, by sending His disciples to bring the 
colt spoken of by the prophet hundreds of years 
before. By this Jesus proclaimed Himself as 
Messiah, and fulfillment of prophecy, and His 
disciples and the people understood that He did 
so. These words have no meaning in Zechariah 
apart from their goal in Jesus as Messiah. If 
this is not true, then He was either deceived, or 


128 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


deceiver, and not worthy to be called Lord and 
Saviour. 

All through these last six chapters of Zecha- 
riah, as also through Malachi, runs the phrase, 
‘in that day,” a characteristically Messianic ex- 
pression, showing the intense yearning of that age 
for Messiah’s coming, the hoping, waiting spirit 
with which the book of Old Testament prophecy 
was closing. 

The book of Malachi is so named from the 
Hebrew word translated ‘‘My Messenger” at the 
beginning of the third chapter. It is the book of 
‘‘My Messenger,” that is, the Old Testament 
book of the forerunner of Christ. In conformity 
with this some versions and manuscripts have 
changed “Malachi” of the title to ‘“Malacho,”’ 
which means “his messenger.” If this be true, 
then the entire book has Messianic purpose. It 
was a common tradition of the ancients that Ezra 
was this ‘“‘messenger of Jehovah” of the title of 
the book. 


The first Messianic passage of the book, 3:1, 
tells of the mission of the messenger: 


“Behold, I send my Messenger (Malachi), 
And He shall prepare the way before Me: 


And suddenly shall come to His temple 
The Lord, whom ye seek; 


And the Messenger of the Covenant, 
Whom ye desire, behold, He cometh, 
Saith Jehovah of Hosts.” 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 129 


The person certainly expected here is Divine 
in nature, for the messenger goes before Jehovah 
of Hosts, and the Coming One is Adhon, the 
sovereign Lord. He is also the Covenanted One, 
promised to the fathers and prophets, for His 
forerunner is the Messenger of the Covenant. 
Later, in 4:5, this messenger is specifically called 
“Elijah,” in which declaration we find anticipation 
of so many chapters in the Gospels. 


The most significant and satisfactory comment 
on this promise of the messenger is found in the 
opening words of the Gospel according to Mark: 


‘The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, even as it is written in the prop- 
hets, 

Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, 
Who shall prepare the way.” 


Where the Gospel in Malachi left off in long- 
ing expectation, there the Gospel in Mark began, 
with its story of glorious fulfillment. And the 
Divine Person of Malachi, whose sudden coming 
he foresaw, is the Son of God of the Gospel 
according to Mark, whose coming in lowly hu- 
manity was so unexpected, so strange, and so con- 
trary to popular expectation, as to lead to His 
rejection by those to whom He came. This rejec- 
tion was also foreseen by Malachi, for he wrote, 
‘“‘who can abide the day of His coming?” 3:2. 
And yet again: 


130 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


“T have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah of Hosts, 
Neither will I accept an offering at your hand. 
For from the rising of the sun, 

Even unto the going down thereof, 

Great shall be My name among the Gentiles; 

In every place incense shall be offered, 

And a pure offering to My name; 

For my name shall be great among the Gentiles.” 


—Mal. 1:10-11. 


How natural it was then, after His rejection, 
death and resurrection, that our Lord commanded 
His disciples, “‘go ye into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to the whole creation,’ Mark 16:15. 


We may close this study of the last prophets 
no more appropriately than with the final words 
of Malachi, the Messenger of the Old Testa- 
ment, which reads like a specially prepared pref- 
ace to the New Testament: ‘Then they that 
feared Jehovah, spoke one with another; and 
Jehovah hearkened, and heard, and a book of 
remembrance was written before Him, for them 
that feared Jehovah and that thought upon His 
name. And they shall be mine, saith Jehovah of 
Hosts, even mine own possession for the Day that 
I am making. 


Unto you that fear My name shall rise 

The Son of Righteousness with healing in his beams, 
Behold I send you Elijah the prophet, 

Before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come; 


PROPHETS OF THE RESTORATION 1st 


And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, 
And the heart of the children to their fathers; 
Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” 


“The heart of the fathers toward the chil- 
dren’’?; that is, the Old Testament looking to- 
ward the New. ‘The heart of the children to- 
ward their fathers” ?; that is, the New Testament 
turning its face toward the Old. And thus has 
the Providential preservation and order mani- 
fested in gracious beauty the meeting place be- 
tween the Old and the New: the unbroken and 
undivided Scriptures. 


There is always for us a plaintive sweetness 
in these prophetic voices, coming to us, as they 
do, out of the dim light and out of the hungry, 
yearning hearts of the Old Testament. I lay 
claim sometimes to a mockingbird, not caged, but 
living out in the open air, as free as the air he 
breathes, who is constantly reminding me of 
the sweet meaning of the prophetic messages. 
This mockingbird for years has made his home 
in the great holly tree across the way, staying by 
us in summer as in winter. When, after the win- 
ter is past, he perches on the chimney top over 
my study, or on the spire of the Library over 
against my window, and sings out hour by hour 
the gladness which spring and summer put into 
his heart, I do not care for his song. For the 
notes of his day-song are in the major key, and 


132 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


sound bold and raucous in comparison with the 
soft trills of cardinal or thrush. But when he 
sings at night! That is quite another story. lI 
love to lie awake and listen, as in the darkest 
hour of the night, not far from the dawn, from 
his perch in the holly tree he pours out in plain- 
tive minor key the sweetest notes that come from 
feathered throats. He seems to sing, in faith and 
hope, his message of confidence in the coming 
day, the herald of the dawn. So do those pro- 
phetic voices coming out of the Old Testament’s 
darkest hours, like the music of “songs in the 
night,” tell with peculiar sweetness of the certain 
coming of the promised day, the Day of Messiah; 
singing and waiting for the day to dawn, and for 
the day-star to arise. 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 


ale HE book of this prophet, preéminent among 

the written prophets, has been reserved for 
our final study of the prophetical books, because 
it is, above all others, the book of the Messiah 
in the Old Testament. The title of the book, 
“The Vision of Isaiah,” turns our eyes to the 
future at the very beginning. The word indicates 
a spiritual, or mystical, or transcendental, or far- 
away, vision; not what the eye sees, but the vision 
of the heart, when the eyes are closed. What eye 
could not see, nor ear hear, neither could enter 
into the imagination of man, God has revealed 
to us by His Spirit through Isaiah. 


This prophet, like Micah, whose message has 
already been considered, belonged to the Assyrian 
period, and fulfilled his ministry between 741 and 
695 B. C. At that time Assyria and Egypt were 
struggling against each other for world suprem- 
acy, and unfortunate Palestine lay between the 
two contestants. Its strategic position made it 
coveted of both empires, and in consequence in- 
vading armies often swept ruthlessly through all 
its length. This struggle of centuries, coming to 
its climax in Isaiah’s time, must be held in mind, 
in order to the understanding of many of his chap- 
ters. The whole world was in upheaval, very 


134 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


much as in our own time. Many nations were 
seeking better places for themselves in the sun, 
and fighting also to make their national gods su- 
preme on earth. Isaiah’s land and kings were 
caught in this restless and ambitious surging of 
the peoples. 

Of the prophet himself we know very little, and 
that little only as certain events of his life were 
used with symbolical meaning. His father is 
given as Amoz, but who was he? prince or ple- 
beian? Isaiah may have been an aristocrat, as 
tradition insists that he was; he may have been 
of the common people, for whose rights he fought 
so faithfully. However this may have been, he 
was a prince in genius and equipment, the master 
of highest ideals and most beautiful diction. His 
book is the finest art gallery of the past, nearly 
every verse a picture with the finest lines and 
colors of art. For unforgetable figures of speech, 
which by their aptness and beauty have passed 
into the vocabulary of the ages, we owe more to 
Isaiah than to any other Old Testament book. 

Strange it is that such a man should hide him- 
self. Jeremiah and Ezekiel talk often of them- 
selves. But this man, like John, who came to 
bear witness of another, seemed to be intent on 
hiding himself behind Him, whose glory it was 
his mission to proclaim long before He really 
came. It is true that we do not see much of 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 135 


Isaiah in his book; but it is sufficient that we see 


his Lord there. 


The exceeding beauty of the book, especially 
its marvels of prophetic vision, necessarily gave 
opportunity to antisupernaturalistic critics to dis- 
pute its genuineness and unity. Some minds seem 
constitutionally and habitually inclined always to 
kick at the good and the wonderful. It is an un- 
fortunate deficiency, which perhaps should not be 
judged too harshly, because it is a helpless defi- 
ciency. These rebels against the beautiful have 
relieved Isaiah of his splendid clothing, and left 
him half naked. They have stripped away from 
him the gladness of faith and song, and left the 
dry skeleton of a preacher of invective. A ref- 
erence to the future, or a gleam of Messianic 
hope, is sufficient evidence with these judges, to 
condemn such a passage to be tumbled down the 
centuries. 


But we are not concerned over-much with these 
multitudinous internal disturbances of criticism. 
And if we were, which should we follow? George 
Adam Smith, or Driver, or Cheyne, or Duhm, or 
Marti, who disagree by centuries in their assign- 
ment of the time of origin to the same chapters. 
It must have been, not Job, but a redacting higher 
critic, who wrote: “God (only) knoweth the way 
that I take.” We welcome back, headed toward 
the fold, our new rescuing critic Sellin, returning 
like the brave shepherd of Amos, having saved 


136 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


from the jaws of the critical lion two legs and 
part of an ear; that is, about thirty chapters. 
However, whether the book came into its present 
form by the hands of Isaiah’s disciples just after 
his death, or in or after the Exile, we have it now 
as it was completed centuries before Christ, and 
its Messianic vision, whether four centuries long, 
or seven, is in either case a miracle of the Spirit 
of God. 

The place of this book in the New Testament, 
not equalled nor approached by any other book, 
indicates its value as Messianic. Beginning with 
Matthew 7:23, and Mark /:2, it appears count- 
less times in evangels and epistles. 


The number and variety of its titles and names 
of the Messiah, and of its descriptive phrases of 
His kingdom, mark it as Messiah’s book in a 
special way. Some of these titles are: The 
Branch; King of Righteousness; Prince of Peace; 
The Anointed One; Seed of Abraham; Chosen 
One; Immanuel; and Servant of Jehovah. The 
first of these we found also in Jeremiah and 
Zechariah; the Prince of Peace in David's songs 
and in Micah; and Seed of Abraham through the 
whole course of the Old Testament. 


Two of these titles are distinctive of Isaiah, and 
of greatest importance in the Old Testament an- 
ticipation and the New Testament realization of 
the Messiah. To these two we shall give the 
space at our command. First, Jmmanuel, which 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH Poe 


is used of the Messiah only in Isaiah, unless we 
find it also in the refrain of the forty-sixth psalm, 
“The Lord of Hosts is with us” (Immanu). 
But this psalm also may have come from the pen 
of Isaiah. The word Immanuel means “God (is) 
with us,” prophetic of ‘“‘that day,’’ when God 
would manifest Himself to and among His peo- 
ple, for their salvation and the consummation of 
His kingdom. Although the word is Isaiah’s, the 
idea pervades all Old Testament prophecy. 

The Immanuel passages are all found in the 
first part of Isaiah, in chapters 7 to 11, and 32, 
all of which, by Sellin and many others, are af- 
firmed to be from Isaiah’s hand. These chapters 
belong to the time of the invasion of Judah by 
Israel and Syria, which well nigh brought the end 
of Judah, this catastrophe being prevented only 
by the greater menace of general Assyrian in- 
vasion. The extreme peril of those days turned 
some men to profiteering, others to the acceptance 
of the gods of the invading pagans. It sent Isaiah 
into the temple of Jehovah. It made him turn 
his face to the future for a vision of the Promised 
One, the King able to save, and to reign in 
righteousness. In the dark hour of that night 
Isaiah saw the Morning Star. 

(1) Immanuel first appears in chapter 7, 
verses 14-17. The allied armies of Israel and 
Syria held Jerusalem in the iron grip of a siege, 
which had brought the city to the verge of despair. 


138 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Already the allies had decided upon a foreigner, 
who should be seated on the throne of David, 
when the city fell, one called ‘“‘the son of Tabeel,”’ 
Is. 7:6. King Ahaz and his staff had gathered, 
it seems, to consider some last desperate expedient 
for deliverance, when the prophet Isaiah appeared 
among them. His message from the Lord was 
that Ahaz might dismiss his fears, for the two 
kings must soon abandon the siege, and their own 
destruction was hurrying on. Seeing unbelief in 
the faces of his hearers, Isaiah offered a sign from 
the Lord, any sign they might ask, from heaven 
above to hell below. Ahaz, who was hostile to 
Isaiah’s religion and to his policy for Israel, re- 
jected the prophet’s gracious offer with scorn. 
[saiah knew that Ahaz, refusing to trust Jehovah, 
had put his faith in Assyria, and bought its inter- 
vention with a ruinous tribute; and Ahaz possibly 
had tidings, or at least some hope, that just then 
the Assyrian was invading the land of Syria. So 
in hypocrisy or scorn he answered the prophet: 
“YT will not ask, neither will I tempt Jehovah.” 
Then the prophet, turning upon the apostate king, 
said, ‘“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you 
a sign’’ (whether you ask it or not). 

This is the historical setting of the appearance 
in revelation for the first time of the Immanuel 
sign. ‘The first element in its interpretation must 
be that it is not a sign of blessing to Ahaz, the 
apostate, but of judgment or deprivation. The 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 139 


emphasis of the sign is not upon the birth of 
Immanuel, but upon the time condition: before 
the child can come to years of moral discretion 
and accountability, twelve years with the Jews, 
Israel and Syria will be conquered and in captivity. 
After that, instead of deliverance through Im- 
manuel, Ahaz and wicked Judah will be judged 
and punished: “Jehovah will bring upon thee, 
and upon thy people,” days darker than those 
through which they were then passing. 

Our English versions do not give an accurate 
translation of the Hebrew words, nor show the 
contrast of some of the archaic forms of the 
words of the ‘Sign’? with Isaiah’s own classic 
Hebrew. The original does not read “a virgin,” 
but “the virgin,” or young woman just come to 
marriageable age. She is not an indefinite or gen- 
eral character; but a well-known person to Ahaz, 
to Isaiah and to all who heard. The expression 
“curds and honey shall he eat,” are not promise 
of rich food and opulence, but of a desolated land 
and a childhood spent in poverty, as described in 
7:21-25. ‘Before the child shall know,” as was 
suggested above, indicates that Immanuel would 
not come at that time, because before he could 
come to manhood and save his people, what Ahaz 
desired would already have come by other means. 
The words of this phrase are archaic Hebrew and 
condensed into the form of poetical proverb. The 
word also translated “shall conceive” is an early 


140 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Hebrew form, possibly a verb in the masculine 
form which belonged to the earlier days, when 
one form represented both genders. 

Our conclusion is, then, that Isaiah quoted the 
well-known Immanuel prophecy, written before 
his time, but uses it negatively with reference to 
Ahaz; Immanuel and his salvation will not come 
to Ahaz. This is not the first instance of the use 
by Isaiah of an earlier book of Messianic 
prophecy. He and Micah in common, as shown 
in Chapter Nine above, drew from some common 
source the exaltation of Zion to give justice and 
peace to all nations, Isaiah 2:1-4. It seems pos- 
sible that there was once a book of Immanuel, 
known to Isaiah and his time, but lost to us; and 
that we are indebted to this crisis of those days 
of darkness for its preservation in our Scriptures. 

Let us translate the passage in harmony with 
what has been said above: 

‘Behold the virgin has conceived, and is about 
to bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 
Curds and honey shall he eat until the time of his 
knowing to refuse evil and to choose good ?”’ 

So for the quotation, with Isaiah’s question 
mark. But after it comes the meaning and appli- 
cation to Ahaz: “‘But before the lad should know 
to refuse evil and to choose good, the land whose 
two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken (the 
captivity of the Northern Kingdom). Then Je- 
hovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 141 


and upon thy father’s house, days that have not 
come, from the day that Ephraim departed from 
Judah, even the king of Assyria.” 

This interpretation meets the facts of the his- 
torical context, of the archaic words so different 
from Isaiah, and of the judgment on Ahaz. At 
the same time, it has, in the providence of God, 
and by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, preserved 
for us this ancient message of hope, here quoted 
by Isaiah; so that Matthew 7:23, could turn to it 
when the Virgin had brought forth: ‘Now all 
this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which 
was spoken by the Lord through the prophet 
(Matthew, usually so exact, does not say Isaiah), 
saying : 

Behold the virgin shall be with Child, 


And shall bring forth a Son. 
And they shall call His name Immanuel.” 


Efforts at a purely rationalistic explanation on 
historical lines are vain. One says that the woman 
was the wife of Ahaz, and the child Hezekiah. 
But Hezekiah was nearly grown at the time. An- 
other thinks that Isaiah speaks of his own wife, 
who had two other children with symbolical 
names. But she could not possibly have been 
spoken of as the virgin just reaching marriageable 
age. The suggestion that some woman seen in 
the crowd was made the object of Isaiah’s words 
is a mere evasion. We meet here a Divinely pre- 


142 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


served record of the definite hope of Messiah, 
cherished in Old Testament hearts. We have 
found its answer only in Jesus. 


(2) Isaiah 9:1-6 is the second Immanuel pass- 
age, although the name occurs twice in chapter 
eight, harking back to 7:14-17. In the closing 
verses of chapter eight Isaiah pictures the deso- 
lation of Galilee after the Assyrian invasion. 
Burning homes and fields fill the land with dark- 
ness. The traveler passes through it hungry and 
thirsty, and as if he were being thrust into outer 
darkness. Isaiah saw this gloom dispelled by 
Immanuel’s coming. Here is another miracle of 
prophecy; that Isaiah, a patriotic Jew, should see 
Immanuel coming first to Galilee, hated and de- 
spised in his day, just as in Nathaniel’s. There is 
no other explanation of this strange phenomenon, 
except that he was “borne along by the Holy 
Spirit.” When Jesus came into Galilee, preach- 
ing, teaching and healing, the people remembered 
the words of Isaiah: 


‘The people that walked in darkness have seen 
a great light; they that dwelt in the land of the 
shadow of death, upon them hath the light bright- 
ly shined. . . . For unto usa child has been 
born, unto us a son has been given: and the prin- 
cipality shall be upon his shoulder: and his name 
shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty 
God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of 


the increase of his government and of peace there 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 143 


shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and 
upon his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold 
it with justice and with righteousness from hence- 
forth even forever.” 


These words contain Isaiah’s own positive con- 
ception of Immanuel over against the negative 
aspect, presented to Ahaz in 7:14-17. The fea- 
tures of this new conception are: 

(a) Immanuel’s first ministry will be in Galilee. 

(b) Divine titles are ascribed to Him, who is 
the Son of the Highest; for no good Jew could 
have given such titles to mere man. “Mighty 
God” and “Everlasting Father” admit of no other 
interpretation. 

(c) The characteristic features of the Davidic 
Covenant are found here: he shall sit on David's 
throne, his kingdom is everlasting; and he is God’s 
Son, as Jehovah had promised David. 


(3) In Isaiah 77 :1-9, the third Immanuel pass- 
age, new features appear in Isaiah’s picture of the 
Messiah. He is of the house of Jesse; the Spirit 
is poured out abundantly on him; righteousness 
and justice are the foundation and strength of his 
reign; and peace will fill the whole earth. 

The tenth chapter closes, like the eighth, with 
a scene of desolation. Before the mighty Assy- 
rian, the houses of Israel have fallen as trees of 
the forest before the axes of the woodmen. Only 
the bare stumps remain to accentuate the desola- 
tion. Then begins the message of hope in the 


144 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


eleventh chapter; one of these stumps has life in 
it, and will put forth again; for there shall come 
forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. 


The accuracy and evenness of his justice are 
described by the keenness of the sense of smell: 
‘‘he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 
neither decide after the hearing of his ears’’; but, 
literally, ‘“‘his smelling shall be in the fear of 
Jehovah.”’ His sensitiveness to the fear of Jeho- 
vah will be as keen as the sense of smell. Right- 
eousness is declared to be the strength of his 
reign by the figure of girded loins or waist. 


Finally, his reign of perfect righteousness will 
heal the wounds of the world and establish ever- 
lasting peace. This is symbolized under the figure 
of the animal and man restored to innocent com- 
radeship, the most beautiful picture of the Old 
Testament : 


“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid; 
And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together ; 
And a little child shall drive them. 
And the cow and the bear shall feed; 
Their young ones shall lie down together, 
And the man-eating lion shall eat straw like the ox. 
And the suckling child shall dance on the den of the 
python, 
And the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s 
eye, 
They shall not hurt nor destroy 


THE VISION OF ISAIAH 145 


In all my holy mountain; 
For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of Je- 
hovah, 


As the waters cover the sea.” 


(4) Isaiah 32:1-4 continues in the same form 
and spirit these Immanuel passages, bringing a 
climax of kingliness to Immanuel and his reign: 


“Behold a king shall be a king in righteousness, 

And as for princes, they shall be princes in equity. 

And an individual shall be as a hiding place from the 
wind, 

And a covert from the tempest, 

As streams of water in a dry place, 

As the shade of a great cliff in a weary land.” 


(5) The first part of Isaiah’s book closes with 
a glowing description of Immanuel’s age, chapter 
35, under four figures; the transformed desert; 
the ills of the human body healed; oases and a 
highway through the desert; and the redeemed 
coming over this highway to Zion as singing pil- 
grims, with joy like a crown on their heads. 

So Isaiah saw in vision Immanuel, the King of 
Righteousness, on an everlasting throne, in an age 
of universal peace. All the wonderful words of 
preceding prophecies seemed to be gathered up 
by him into this incomparable description of the 
Coming Redeemer. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH 


HE second part of Isaiah, chapters 40-66, 

is prefaced and introduced by the historical 
section of the book, chapters 36-39; especially by 
the words of Isaiah in 39:6: 


‘Behold, the days are coming, when all that is 
in thine house, and that which thy fathers have 
laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to 
Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith Jehovah. 
And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, whom 
thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they 
shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of 
Babylon.”’ 

This is an introduction, or dating, of the fol- 
lowing prophecies, just as genuine as the historical 
introductions to chapters 6, 7 and 20. The in- 
tention, so to date and assign it, of those who 
have so arranged the prophet’s book, cannot be 
mistaken. 

These chapters are both alike and unlike the 
first thirty-five chapters in tone, color and spirit. 
They are similar in vocabulary, in illustration, in 
geographical and topographical setting, in floral 
and animal life, and in conception of the Deity, 
using the same Isaianic title for God, “the Holy 
One of Israel,’ as the first part of the book. In 
fact, the internal arguments for unity of author- 


THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH 147 


ship are ninety per cent to ten per cent, and most 
of the ten per cent are rationalistic presupposition. 

But there is a difference in attitude and out- 
look. In the second part the prophet no longer 
looks with glad hope for the settlement of the 
ills of his day by the coming to the throne of a 
glorious King of righteousness, and the early 
establishing of peace among the nations through 
his just reign. Righteousness and peace cannot 
come through moral or civic or national changes. 
The root of the evil is much deeper. The whole 
people has become corrupted, apostate and un- 
worthy. The prophet has been saddened and 
disillusioned by the rejection of his message and 
the willful covenant breaking of his people. In 
his distress he turns from men and measures, 
from: earthly kings and princes, to Jehovah Him- 
self for the hope of the Promise. 

This is not an unnatural experience, nor does 
it require a theory of diverse authorship for its 
explanation. It happens often within the life 
experience of a Gospel minister, whose life serv- 
ice begins with roseate visions of a message from 
his loving heart accepted and heeded by his 
hearers, and through it towns and communities 
turned to righteousness. But the passing years 
are marked by the gravestones of his fairest 
hopes. The selfish, carnal minds of men remain 
unbelieving and unchanged. In the spiritual 


148 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


awakening, which comes with disappointment, he 
looks to God alone for saving help. 

This represents, even if in low degree, the 
change of attitude and method, which is found in 
the two parts of this book. The prophet has to 
face the hard, and apparently insoluble problem 
of righteousness. How can a sinful and unrepent- 
ing people be saved? How shall a covenant be 
kept with covenant breakers? How is it possible 
for God ever to justify the unjust? It is the 
same old problem of the book of Job, and of 
some of the Psalms. It is really the dilemma 
which came with the fall, and had continued 
through all time. 

Isaiah turns for the answer of this problem 
to Jehovah. He alone can help. The subjective 
righteousness which, in the first part of the book 
he pled for in the hearts of king and people, 
has now become objective to them, the righteous- 
ness of Jehovah, which He alone can achieve and 
provide. This Paul saw so clearly, as of it he 
wrote: “being ignorant of God’s righteousness, 
and seeking to establish their own, they did not 
subject themselves to the righteousness of God,” 
Romans 10:3. ‘Not a righteousness of mine 
own, but that which is through faith in Christ, 
the righteousness which is from God by faith,” 
Phil. 3:9. Paul’s answer to the problem, and 
Isaiah’s are the same. 


THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH 149 


If one party to the Covenant is habitually and 
stubbornly truant and unfit, then the other strong 
party to it must assume and bear the weight of 
both sides, or the Covenant must become void. 
But David’s and Abraham’s and Eve’s Covenant 
could not be voided. So Isaiah laid all the bur- 
den on the strong shoulders of the Eternal, call- 
ing on His strong arm to save. The words of 
this prophecy are filled with this theme: the 
revealed arm of Jehovah; He was pierced by our 
transgression; by His knowledge shall My Right- 
eous Servant make righteousness for many. Out 
of the agony of his grievous problem Isaiah was 
led to a solution which is everlasting in the Gospel. 
In the gloom of that hour of impending and 
inevitable death there appeared the form of a 
Divine Saviour bringing life and immortality to 
light. 

Thus Isaiah worked out the answer to the 
problem of righteousness in the form of the 
Servant of Jehovah, who is one of the chief per- 
sonages of the Old Testament, ranking in Messi- 
anic importance with Prophet, Priest and King. 
The interpretations of this remarkable person, 
who is only found in the Scriptures of Jew and 
Gentile, have been many, following ordinarily 
two general lines; although he has been supposed 
by some, as Sellin, to represent some actual Old 
Testament person. One group of interpreters 
holds that the Servant of Jehovah passages all 


150 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


speak of an individual. But this is not possible, 
because some passages are evidently nationalistic. 
Others maintain that all are national in appli- 
cation; but this also is impossible, since some 
passages are unalterably individual in meaning. 

We must believe that here, as in the Immanuel 
sections, there is a progressive and developing 
presentation. Beginning with an older and well- 
known idea of the Servant, the inspired prophet 
advances to a higher, spiritual and redemptive 
vision. In accordance with all of our experience 
of prophecy, this Messianic message of hope 
takes upon itself the form of something known 
and cherished, that through it the people may 
understand the promise. We shall follow the 
development of the vision in the regular, his- 
torical order of the passages. There is no way 
better or more honest. 

1. The Servant, by this name, appears first in 
Isaiah 47:8-13, under the form of the nation: 
‘Israel, my servant; Jacob, whom I have chosen; 
seed of Abraham, my lover.’’ This is no new 
idea, but is taken directly from the covenant 
promises of the past; ‘“‘ye shall be Mine own pos- 
session from among all peoples. And ye shall be 
unto Mea kingdom of priests, and a holy nation,” 
Exodus 19:5-6. Israel was chosen from among 
the nations to serve Jehovah, and glorify Him in 
the earth. The promises of olden time declared 


THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH 151 


this again and again. With this familiar fact the 
prophet begins his vision of the Servant. 

2. But in the second passage, 42:1-4, we enter 
upon a new phase of the Servant development. 
Here there is no reference whatever to the nation; 
but directly to a person, endued with the Spirit 
for a mission to Jew and Gentile, with special 
emphasis on justice and salvation for the Gentiles. 
The passage is a companion piece to Isaiah’s 
vision of justice and peace in 2:1-4. The evident 
personal meaning of this description of the Sery- 
ant led Matthew to proclaim its fulfillment in 
Christ’s Galilean ministry, Matthew 12:15-21. 
We may well think that Matthew is here record- 
ing the interpretation given by Jesus Himself. 
A reason for the prophet’s turning from the 
nation is found in verses 18-25 of this 42d chap- 
ter, describing the national servant as blind, deaf 
and lawless. | 

3. Chapter 43:1-7, however, brings a reaction 
in the prophet’s mind to the first phase, of chapter 
#1; for he loved his people, and clung for their 
sake to the promises for them made to Abraham 
and the fathers. We can see and sympathize 
with the struggle in his own soul; for how could 
he cast out his own Israel! Let us read them: 

“Thus saith Jehovah, that created thee, O 
Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel: fear 
not, for I have redeemed thee.”’ 


152 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


But here we find that this is not a national 
Israel, but a redeemed Israel, another instance 
of Isaiah’s well-known doctrine of the saved rem- 
nant; with no reference to the mission of the 
Servant in a direct manner, as in preceding chap- 
ters. The prophet is wrestling in chapters #2 and 
43 with the fact of the stubborn sins of his peo- 
ple. So redemption, not service, becomes his 
theme. The old national idea is passing through 
the crucible of refining. Stern are the words with 
which the prophet denounces the old Israel after 
the flesh: 


“Thou hast not called upon Me, O. Jacob; 
But thou hast been weary of Me, O Israel. 
Therefore I will profane the holy princes, 
And I will make Jacob a curse, 

And Israel a reviling.” 
—43 :22-28. 


4. In chapter #4 the redemptive phase of the 
prophet’s conception is further developed under 
two figures: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit 
upon the Servant, like the streams which give life 
to the parched earth, #4:3-4; and secondly, the 
blotting out of Israel’s transgressions as a thick 
cloud, 44:22. But this chapter has for Israel its 
near historical goal; for it ends with the call of 
Cyrus to restore them to their land; not the dis- 
tant, final goal of Messianic consummation. 
Chapter #5 tells of the conquests of Cyrus north- 
ward and westward, as far as the kingdom of 


THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH 153 


Croesus. Chapters 46 and #7 narrate the fall of 
proud Babylon, that the captives may escape from 
her. 

5. Chapter #8 brings the culmination of the 
rebellion and unfitness of the national Servant. 
The arraignment of Israel by Jehovah makes 
forever impossible the conception of national 
Israel as His Servant in succeeding chapters. The 
words themselves are their own interpreter: 


“Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, 
Who are called by the name of Israel, 
And are come forth out of the waters of Judah; 
Who swear by the name of Jehovah, 
And make mention of the God of Israel, 
But not in truth, nor in righteousness. 
Because I knew that thou art obstinate, 
And thy neck an iron sinew, 
And thy brow brass; 
Therefore I have declared it to thee from of old. 
Yea, thou heardest not; 
Yea, thou knewest not; 
Yea, from of old thine ear was not opened. 
For I knew that thou didst deal treacherously, 
And wast called a transgressor from the womb. 
For My name’s sake will I defer mine anger, 
And for My praise will I refrain from thee, 
That I cut thee not off.” —48 31-9. 


They shall indeed go forth out of Babylon, 
but still unregenerate; for, as the chapter closes, 
‘‘there is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked.” 


154 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


After the prophet has reached this climax in his 
realization of Israel’s unfitness as a nation to be 
Jehovah’s Messianic Servant, a climax which 
Paul characterized as the casting off of Israel, 
we must expect a marked transition in his theme; 
and so it is that: 


6. Chapter #9 introduces an altogether differ- 
ent phase of the Servant. Here for the first time 
in Isaiah’s vision, he appears in the first person, 
speaking for himself: 


“Jehovah hath called me from the womb. 
And He saith unto me, Thou art My servant; 
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” 


The word “Israel” is rejected from the text by 
some authorities, because it is superfluous to the 
meter of the line, and altogether out of harmony 
with the unmistakably individual application of 
the passage. But this is neither necessary nor 
probable; for in his transition the prophet holds 
to the old name-form of the Covenant, to fill it 
with new and personal contents. He sees a new 
Israel, the Christ and His church, the true Israel 
of God. 

That it is impossible here to hold any longer 
to a national conception is most evident, because 
the Servant is clearly and finally separated from 
the nation, and set objectively over against it: 


‘And now saith Jehovah that formed Me 
From the womb to Be His Servant, 


THE SERVANT OF JEHOVAH | 155 


- To bring Jacob again to Him, 
And that Israel be gathered unto Him; 
It is too light a thing that Thou shouldest be 
My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
And to restore the preserved of Israel: 
I will also give Thee for a light to the Gentiles, 


That Thou mayest be my salvation 
Unto the end of the earth.” —49 :5-6. 


The distinction between Israel, as the nation, 
and Israel as a Messianic individual is too evident 
to admit of question. Holding with one hand to’ 
the historic form of the old covenant, the prophet 
points with the other to the Redeemer in the New 
Covenant. Paul so uses these words and their 
distinction between Israel and the Servant in his 
second Sabbath sermon at Antioch, Acts 13:47: 
“Paul and. Barnabas spake out boldly, and said, 
It was necessary that the word of God should 
first be spoken to you. Seeing ye thrust it from 
you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal 
life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the 
Lord commanded us, saying, 


I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles, 
That thou shouldst be for salvation unto the uttermost 
part of the earth. 


And as the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, 
and glorified the word of God.” 


Never again in his Servant chapters, after this 
rise to a spiritual conception of the Servant, will 


156 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Isaiah ever return to the purely national phase. 
He may speak of redeemed individuals in the 
plural as ‘“‘My servants,” ‘““My ministers,” but 
never again of the nation in the singular, as “My 
Servant.” It is true that Moffatt in his ‘New 
Translation of the Old Testament’ inserts the 
word “‘Israel’’ twice in his translation of chapter 
53. But it is an arbitrary act, an interpretative 
speculation, like his many other wild ventures at 
rendering in a book, which is a radical effort at 
interpretation, although it will surely plead in 
vain for place among accepted and faithful trans- 
lations. 


7. In chapter 50 we find the Servant speaking 
again for Himself, and declaring His gentle sub- 
mission to the Father’s will. As chapter #2 1s 
related to #/, in its description of the gentle 
meekness of the Servant after His first national 
phase, so does chapter 50 show the grace and 
gentleness of the Servant under the new individua! 
phase, and in words which bring into clearness 
before us the trial and crucifixion of Christ: 


“The Lord Jehovah hath opened Mine ear, 
And I was not rebellious, 
Neither turned away backward. 
I gave My back to the smiters, 
And My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; 
I hid not My face from shame and spitting.” 


— 5) 35-6. 


THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 157 


Let the reader compare these words of gentle 
obedience to the Father with the prophet’s de- 
scription of the natural, national and unfit Israel 
in 48:8: 

“Yea, thou heardst not; yea, thou knewest not; 
From of old time thine ear was not opened.” 


The great climactic Servant of Jehovah pas- 
sage, chapter 53 to which we now come and for 
which chapter 49 has prepared us, deserves a 
separate chapter for its consideration. 


CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
THE SUFFERING SERVANT 


Asien reading of the Servant’s personal 

appearance, and the announcement of His 
mission world-wide to the nations, as well as to 
Israel, we find ourselves awaiting a full statement 
of His great work, and our expectation is not in 
vain, for Isaiah 52:13-53:12 brings to us. this 
statement in a revelation so vivid and startling 
as to make it the most prominent chapter in the 
Old Testament. It is the high peak of Messianic 
prophecy, which after the individual development 
of chapter #9, and by its own clear words, refuses 
to admit adequate interpretation as of the nation, 
but only in the most luminous person of history, 
the Messiah. National application falls down, be- 
cause there never has been, is not now, and never 
shall be, a nation, which can measure up to these 
otherwise unthinkable words. 

In this chapter it is the nation, or group, which 
gazes upon, and speaks of, one objective to itself. 
How can this be that, and that be this? How 
can plus be minus, or positive be negative, or 
objective be subjective? No more could Israel be 
atoner and atoned for, both sufferer and saved. 
Some have essayed to distinguish a saving Israel 
within a saved Israel, a device which is as queer, 
as itisin vain. But these points of interpretation 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 159 


will appear in a study of the words of the passage 
itself. 

It has been called the “Psalm of the Suffering 
Servant of Jehovah.” In form it is poetical, a 
hymn of the Messiah in five stanzas as follows: 

1. The Servant Lifted Up, in order that all 
may look upon him, and see the unexpected and 
amazing thing which has happened to him, Isaiah 
D2s03-1 5: 

It is a mistake to interpret these three verses 
as teaching the exaltation of the Servant, in the 
sense of the extolling of his grace and glory. Such 
a mistake is found in the marginal reference of 
the Revised Versions, which relates the words, 
“exalted and lifted up,” to the “high and lofty 
one” of Isaiah 57:15. Just the opposite, how- 
ever, is true. These words may better be related 
to, and interpreted by, the declaration by our 
Lord of His being lifted up upon the Cross, ‘‘And 
I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me,” 
words which seem to carry us back to their source 
in the prophetic vision of Isaiah. Here we look, 
not upon the exaltation in glory, but upon the lift- 
ing up of the Servant, that we may behold His 
body pierced, and His soul poured out unto death. 
That this is true, an accurate rendering of these 
three verses will prove: 


“Behold My Servant shall deal tactfully, 
He shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. 
Just as many were in consternation at Him— 


160 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


(So marred was His face more than any man’s, 

And His figure more than the sons of men)— 

So shall He startle many nations. 

Kings shall shut tight their mouths at Him; 

For that which had not been told them, shall they see; 
And that which they had not heard, shall they perceive.” 


That which had overwhelmed with amazement 
the disciples and the faithful ones at the Great 
Passover, shall also throughout all time startle 
kings, as the heads and representatives of all 
nations. In all time the unthinkable and immeas- 
urable depths of the humiliation of the Servant 
of Jehovah will bring astonishment to those who 
look upon Him. For, they had longed and waited 
for the King in His Beauty, the Glorious Seed 
and Son of Covenant Promise, the Desire of All 
Nations. But when they look upon Him—what 
is this that they see? A stretched and suffering 
body upon a cross of shame! A face gashed and 
blood-stained from the crown of thorns! A figure 
drawn with anguish and torn by dull, rough iron! 
Who could think but with amazement upon this 
thing, which passed all belief! So we are brought 
in natural sequence of revelation to the second 
stanza: 

2. The humiliation and suffering of the world’s 
promised and expected Redeemer far surpassing 
all powers of thought or description, Isaiah 


bor ey Ws 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 161 


“Who has believed what we have heard ? 
And to whom has the arm (or salvation) of Jehovah 
been revealed ? 
For he grew up before Him as a tender plant, 
And as a root out of a dry ground: 
He has no grace or attractiveness, that we should look 
on Him; 
And there is no beauty, that we should desire Him. 
He was despised and abandoned of men; 
A man of pains and known of sickness; 
And as one from whom men hide their faces, 
He was despised, and we considered Him not.” 


Here are figures and pictures so startling, that 
neither translators nor interpreters have ever 
been willing to take them at their face value. 
Let us now be honest with these figures of speech, 
and give to them the values for which they call. 
In paraphrase they seem to be telling us: The 
King of Righteousness, bringing salvation, fore- 
told and magnified by sage, prophet and poet, has 
at last, in vision, appeared. But what an appear- 
ance! Who can believe the report we bring of 
Him? The King of Glory! No, a Man of Sor- 
rows! One shrinks from giving literal meaning 
to the harsh and shameful metaphors, which de- 
scribe His appearing: an untimely sprout wilted 
under the fierce sun; a bulb burned and shrivelled 
in the cracked surface of the rainless and blistered 
ground; a figure without a line of grace; a face 
without a trace of beauty! No, the artists, from 


162 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


traditional Luke to Raphael and Hunt and Hoff- 
man and Munkacsky, were all in error! His was 
not a noble countenance and a majestic form, but 
a body that knew disease, and a face marred by 
the sharp lines of pain. Those who knew Him 
best forsook Him and fled as from one tainted 
and accursed. And as for ourselves, we gave this 
Humiliated One no consideration at all, but we 
turned our faces away as from one bowed and 
misshapen by deformity, and we shrank away as 
from one accursed. ‘The poet-prophet was ex- 
pected to turn his face upward toward the skies 
for the vision of the King; but on the contrary, 
he was looking over the precipice, and saw in the 
lowest depth of woe and shame—the Son of 
David, the Son of God! Who hath believed the 


report we heard! 


Those who would solve this riddle, must go to 
the Evangelists, and follow through their pages 
the footsteps of Him, in whom only could be 
combined the highest heights of Godlikeness and 
the lowliest humanity. Now we see Jesus made 
lower than the angels, for the black darkness of 
Gethsemane, for the ignominies of the judgment 
hall, for the agonies of Golgotha, that He might 
taste death for every man. 

This second stanza of the Psalm of the Suffer- 
ing Servant pictures for us a festal scene of an 
after year. A multitude of belated pilgrims is 
hurrying, on the last day before the Feast, up to 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 163 


Jerusalem, the city of their fathers, to celebrate 
at Jehovah’s Temple their passover festival. 
They were coming from many and from far dis- 
tant lands. Some of them had never before seen 
the holy city, its altar and its temple. Their 
hearts were filled with glad expectations, and they 
came singing with joy the songs of Ascent to Zion. 
But what is this strange spectacle, which meets 
their eyes, as they draw near the city of their 
fondest love? Surely this is no scene for glad 
holiday or stately festival : three execution crosses, 
each with its agonizing victim, raised on a hill 
almost in the path of their pilgrimage of joy! 
‘‘And as one from whom men hide their faces, 
He was despised, and we gave Him no consider- 
ation.”’ 


The strangest part of this strange story is the 
reason for this unbelievable humiliation of Jeho- 
vah’s Servant, and this is given in the third Stanza. 


Isaiah 53 :4-6: 


3. Not for Himself, but for us He assumed 
and endured the Cross, despising the shame. This 
third and central stanza is also the center and 
heart of the psalm’s meaning and message. Like 
the preceding stanzas, it also has its literal and 
almost weird figures, before which translators 
seem likewise to have hesitated, with a fitting 
difidence, to render: 


164 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


‘However, it was our sicknesses He took upon Himself, 
And He carried the heavy burden of our pain; 

But as for us, we considered Him a leper, 

Smitten by God, and afflicted. 

Nevertheless, He was being pierced by our transgres- 

sions, 

He was being crushed by our iniquities; 

‘The discipline that makes us whole was upon Him; 
And by His scourging there is healing for us. 

As for us, like sheep, we have wandered ; 

We have turned every one to his own way; 

And as for Him, upon Him Jehovah hath made to alight 
The iniquity of us all.” 


These verses teach in plainest language the 
vicarious, or substitutionary, suffering of the Serv- 
ant, the pure for the unholy, the righteous for 
the unjust. ‘This is a word, which we should not 
allow to slip and be lost from our modernized 
and shallowed speech—'‘vicarious.”’ ‘There are 
many old and treasured jewels or heirlooms, 
which we delight to hand on to other generations. 
These gems are so different from the makes and 
models of today, so old fashioned and out-of- 
date. And yet they have messages and meanings 
which no new things can ever have. Then, shall 
we let all those jewel-words of Gospel truth be 
thrown away, just because they have ages of good 
use to their account? ‘‘Vicarious’’; ‘“‘substitu- 
tion’; ‘“‘atonement”’; “‘justification”; ‘‘righteous- 
ness’; “‘redemption!’’ We shall keep them, for 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 165 


they are blood bought, coined from hearts of 
gold. We shall show them with grateful devotion 
to our children, and children’s children. We shall 
turn them over, and over again, that every sylla- 
ble may be appreciated, every facet seen in its 
bright beauty. 


Such is the meaning of these words of this 
third stanza: the suffering which was substituted 
for ours, the vicarious atonement of the Messiah. 
Such evident meaning forever rules out of account 
any idea of the Jew, as a nation, meeting the 
requirements of such a Servant. A holy nation, 
with willing self-abasement; a sinless people, giv- 
ing itself voluntarily for other peoples; a Jewry 
holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners: 
needing not to atone first for its own sins; no 
oppression done by it; no deceit in its mouth! Are 
these ribald jests we hear—or just plain blas- 
phemy? 

The tenses of verse 5 are participial, or present, 
tenses, bringing the scene of the Cross vividly 
before us, as something actually transpiring: “He 
is being pierced by our transgressions.” Our 
backs often have deserved the lash, for we are 
miserable sinners, nor is holy health in us. But 
see His back ridged and welted instead of ours, 
and yet the healing is ours; His sore disciplining, 
but our complete restoration. 

The personal pronouns of these verses are 
their exegetical key. We in the first person, He 


166 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


in the third person, are repeatedly set over against 
each other, to put forward His willing substitu- 
tion for us in contrast with our willful rejection 
of Him. As for Him, He took up our sickness 
on Himself; as for us, we looked on Him as an 
outcast. As for Him, see Him pierced by our 
transgressions; as for us, we think only of our 
own ways! It is the marvel of life and history, 
that first Jew, then Gentile, cannot see-this. How 
long must their eyes be holden? 

From the vivid declaration of the vicarious 
suffering of the Servant an advance is made to 
the fourth stanza, in which we are given: 

4. Some details of His great passion, verses 
7 to 9, including also the first clause of verse 10. 
These details are so unexpected, and so awe- 
inspiring, as to arrest every reader’s attention. 
The Ethiopian eunuch could not get beyond them 
without his earnest query: “Of whom speaketh 
the prophet this?’ Marvelous indeed must be 
the person, of whom such literal words, not fig- 
ures, are descriptive. To think of them with any 
nationalist meaning would be an absurdity. Let 
us try to see them as nearly as possible in their 
original and literal setting: | 


““He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, 
Yet He was not opening His mouth. 
As a lamb led to the slaughter, 
And as a ewe dumb before her shearers, 
He was not opening His mouth, 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 167 


Without imprisonment and without Justice, He was 
taken away; 

And of His own generation who was considering this, 

That He was cut off from the land of the living 

For the transgressions of my people, to whom the stroke 
was due! 

And one made His grave with the wicked, 

And with a rich man in His death. 

Although He had done no oppression, 

Neither was any deceit in His mouth, 

Nevertheless it pleased Jehovah to crush Him with sick- 
ness.”’ 


The words of the first verse of this stanza, 
with their description of the Servant’s gentle sub- 
mission to the will of Jehovah, lead our thoughts 
back to the prophet’s vision of Him in chapters 
#2 and 50: not crying out, nor lifting up His 
voice, nor causing it to be heard in the streets; 
the dutiful tongue of the taught disciple and the 
_ attentive, obedient ear; the back turned to the 
smiters, and the face not hidden from shame and 
spitting. Even a Pilate marveled at the royal 
gentleness of the Divine Prisoner standing at his 
judgment seat. 

The lawlessness of His trial and condemnation 
were literally carried out in the hurried trials, 
the bribed witnesses, and the prearranged proce- 
dure and sentence of Him, who was rushed, rail- 
roaded in one morning, through the processes of 
the courts of Jewish high priest, Roman governor 
and Herodian tetrarch. A pathetic line is that 


168 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


which dwells in amazement on the callousness of 
His own people, in whose place He chose to bear 
the heavy penalty: ‘“‘of His own generation, who 
was considering this!’ The longed for Redeemer 
had come; the Great Son of God, Immanuel 
among men; the problem of salvation forever 
solved! And yet those who lived in the presence 
of it all, of Heaven come down to earth, cared 
not. 

Even provision for the unexpected necessity of 
His burial is anticipated by the prophet. It was 
quite taken for granted that He should suffer, as 
an evil-doer, with the wicked. But it would not 
come into ordinary thinking to associate Him also 
with the rich in His death. But it is such a 
strange turn of thought that is found here, not 
because the Hebrew mind logically related wicked- 
ness and riches. Just the opposite was held true 
in their philosophy, which linked together right- 
eousness, or Divine favor, and riches. Little 
more than a touch of the prophet’s pen accounts 
for this strange conjunction of ideas. The He- 
brew poet was fond of word-play, thereby chal- 
lenging the interest of his reader in his message. 
Isaiah takes the last letter of the word rasha, 
meaning “‘wicked,’’ exchanges it with the first let- 
ter, and by the mutual exchange is formed the word 
ashir, which means “rich.” It is such humanly 
inexplicable occurrences as this, and there are 
many of them, which fill with deeper meaning for 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 169 


us Peter’s words about Old Testament prophecy : 
“holy men spoke from God, carried along by the 
Holy Spirit.” There is, in fact, such a thing as 
“verbal inspiration,” men really speaking “‘in the 


Spirit of God.” 


Christ came to Jerusalem in the prime of man- 
hood. Who could expect arrest, trial and execu- 
tion? Not a foot of land was His, nor any 
thought of a sepulcher entertained by His friends. 
Quite naturally He was sent to die in the com- 
panionship of wicked men. But how about His 
grave? ‘One’ provided for it in the new tomb 
of the rich man, Joseph, who begged His body 
of Pilate, Scripture answering to Scripture as the 
face in a mirror. 


The innocence of the Servant is here afirmed, 
as clearly as when Pilate declared: “I find no 
fault in Him.” It is a rude and cruel parody of 
Divine prophecy to attempt to interpret this inno- 
cence of Israel, or of any other nation. Of Israel 
Jehovah said: “I knew thee, that thou didst deal 
treacherously, and wast called atransgressov* 
the womb” (Isaiah 48:8). But of the Servant 
it is here written: “He had done no act of op- 
pression, neither was deceit found in His mouth, 
yet it pleased Jehovah to crush Him with dis- 
ease.’ The words of this last clause are not 
anti-climactic, but in reality a fitting climax to 
the narration of these details of His great suffer- 
ing. In the Old Testament days early death was 


170 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


held in especial dread. Mortal illness was, cer- 
tainly in early life, the worst of calamities, against 
which many prayers (as in Psalm 39) were made, 
with strong crying and tears. This is the picture 
here: the Redeeming One crushed and cut off in 
the prime of His years! 

This stanza ends with death, the shrouded 
body, and a sealed tomb. We must note this 
carefully, in order to grasp the meaning of the 
mighty transition, which comes with the fifth and 
last stanza: 

5. The exaltation in the highest after humili- 
ation to the lowest, verses 10-12. The Servant 
of the preceding stanzas, suffering, rejected, be- 
trayed and killed, appears now in victory and 
with an endless life. This is precisely the line of 
thought, which Paul followed .when he wrote: 
‘becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death 
of the cross. Wherefore also God hath highly 
exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name 
(Jesus), which is above every name; that at the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow’’ (Phil. 
2:8-10). The words of this stanza are: 


“When His life shall make a trespass offering, 
He shall see seed, He shall prolong His days, 
And the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand; 
He shall see, and be satisfied with, the travail of His 
soul ; 
By His knowledge shall My Servant, the Righteous One, 
Make righteousness for many ; 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 171 


And He must bear their iniquities. 

Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the many, 
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong; 
Because He poured out His soul unto death, 

And was numbered with the transgressors.” 


Some one may ask where in the Old Testament 
shall we look for such declarations of the Resur- 
rection of our Lord as are found in His own 
words: “‘thus it is written, that the Christ should 
suffer and rise again from the dead’ (Luke 
24:46); and also in the words of Paul: “‘it be- 
hooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again 
from the dead” (Acts 17:3). The answer to 
the question is found in this great Servant chap- 
ter, which tells how, after death and burial, He 
lives again to reign and to intercede. 

We also find in these verses the primary source 
of Paul’s theology of redemption. If one should 
launch his canoe into the wide stream of the 
Letter to the Romans, and make his way up- 
stream, seeking the source of the great tide of 
truth, his journey would at last bring him to 
these words of Isaiah: “by His knowledge shall 
my Servant, the Righteous One, justify (i. e., 
make righteous) many.’’ The reason, or ground, 
for this righteousness of which He is the efficient 
cause for many is added in the very following 
clause: for “He shall (or must) bear their iniqui- 
ties.”’ For Paul, and ‘his: fellow apostles and 


172 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


missionaries, all Old Testament law was fulfilled, 
and all prophetic hope realized, in Jesus Christ. 


The unselfishness of the Christ is another of 
the fine touches of this remarkable prophetic 
sketch: “I will divide Him a portion with the 
many.’ The Son, seated at the Father’s right 
hand, the only begotten of the Father, had of 
right all power and possessions. But He was 
unwilling to enjoy these alone, the rather desiring 
to bring many sons into glory with Himself. The 
price which He paid for their right of sonship 
with Himself was precious; it was the extreme 
of costliness and self-denial, as Isaiah’s story of 
the Servant well shows. But after it had been 
fully paid, He could stand victorious with them 
before the Father, and say: “Behold! I and the 
children whom God has given me” (Heb. 2:13). 
‘Father I will that those whom Thou hast given 
me be with me where I am, that they may behold 
my glory” (John 17:24). 

The Psalm of the Suffering Servant comes to 
a fitting close with an epilogue of two lines, cover- 
ing in brief but comprehensive completeness the 
whole history of redemption. First, there is the 
fact of the atonement: “He bore the sin of 
many, with the verb in the past tense, signify- 
ing an accomplished atonement. Secondly, there 
is the intercession on High: “He makes inter- 
cession for the transgressors,’ with the verb in 
the present, or future tense. Our Lord brought 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 173 


these words into their full meaning when He said 
to His disciples: ‘I will make request of the 
Father for you”; for “I came out from the 
Father, and am come into the world; again, I 
leave the world and go unto the Father,” (John 
16:26-28). The most adequate comment on this 
epilogue is found in the words of the man, who 
owed so much to this chapter, and for that reason 
used it so often. “It is Christ Jesus that died 
(for the sins of many), yea rather, that was 
raised from the dead, who is at the right hand 
of God, who also maketh intercession for us (the 
transgressors)’ Romans 8:34. 


After the accomplished sacrifice, and the resur- 
rection in triumph, of the 53d chapter, we expect 
to find songs of praise, victor’s songs. And such 
are chapters 54 and 55. The former is the song 
of Zion enlarged and spread abroad over the 
earth: 


“Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear, 

Break forth into singing, and cry aloud. 

Enlarge the place of thy tent, 

And let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitation, 
Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes. 

This is the heritage of the servants of Jehovah, 

And their righteousness which is of Me.” 


Chapter 55 contains the first evangelistic hymn 
to be sung after the story of the accomplished 


174 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


redemption, with a full and free offer of salva- 
tion: 
“Ho, every one that thirsteth, 
Come ye to the waters. 
Seek ye the Lord, while He may be found; 
Call ye upon Him, while He is near.” 


It could not be otherwise than that the wonderful 
salvation accomplished by the Servant should be 
followed and heralded by these Gospel songs. 

This theme is carried further in Isaiah 6/, 
which tells how the Servant Himself is the first 
bearer of the good tidings, which mission He 
proclaims in His own words: ‘The Spirit of 
Jehovah is upon Me; because Jehovah hath 
anointed Me to preach good tidings.’’ To us it 
may seem a long way down the centuries to a 
day in the synagogue at Nazareth, when these 
words appear again in Scripture (Luke #). But 
how brief that time may have seemed to the 
Eternal One, who first spoke them through Isaiah 
in olden time; and how easily He took them up 
again as fulfilled in the day which He anticipated 
in His first utterance of them! 

With Isaiah 63:1-6 comes the final and com- 
plete consummation of Isaiah’s vision. Here 
Immanuel, the King of Righteousness of the first 
part of Isaiah, and the Suffering and Risen Ser- 
vant of the second part, are reconciled, harmonized 
and proved to be one and the same. The Great 
King must stoop to suffer, in order to rise to save, 


| 


THE SUFFERING SERVANT 7 


After passing into the deep and woeful depths, 
‘He comes forth more royal. And chapter 63 
hails the Servant of 53 as the King of chapters 
9 and //. All through the verses run the blood- 
stains of Isaiah 53, in the word Edom, in the 
wine presses of Bozrah, in the raiment spattered 
and stained with life-blood: 


“Who is this that cometh from Edom, 

With crimsoned garments from Bozrah ? 

This that is blood-red in His apparel ? 

I that speak in Righteousness, Mighty to save. 

I have trodden the winepress alone; 

Their life-blood is sprinkled upon my garments, 

And I have stained with redemption blood all my raiment. 


For the day of vengeance was in my heart, 
And the year of my redeemed had come.” 


CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 


AX irieaena review of the general course of the 
preceding chapters will be necessary, in or- 
der to gather up some of the lines of interpreta- 
tion and some of the particular conclusions into a 
more comprehensive view of Gospel prophecy. 
And to this summary should be added some con- 
sideration of the benefits and practical uses of 
prophecy in Christian experience and service. 


The contention of chapters One and Three is 
emphasized once more; for it is essential to our 
understanding of Messianic Prophecy to bear in 
mind that this Hope was not sporadic nor occa- 
sional, but found in every age of the people’s 
history, as also in all the literature of the Old 
Testament. We found it in the heart of the first 
family in those earliest ages; it was the theme, 
insistently urged, with which the canon of proph- 
ecy closed its pages. Eve clung desperately to 
it; Malachi megaphoned it down the centuries 
intervening between the Old and the New. The 
hope for Messianic redemption was written into 
the Law of Moses, as Jesus often said. It was 
the major postulate of Hebrew philosophy, the 
first dogma of their theology, the invigorating 
incentive in morality. It made trial more toler- 
able, and assured a compensating future. It 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 177 


brought God always near, it trampled doubt 
down, and transformed deserts of fear into gar- 
dens of peace. They themselves called it shelter 
from tempest, living springs in desert sands, shade 
of a great cliff in a weary land, and songs of joy 
in lonely wanderings. And this hope we have 
followed through all the Old Testament; in 
ancient annals, in Law, in history, in Job’s hard 
wrestling, in the songs of psalmists, in the medi- 
tations of sages, in the visions of prophets. The 
bulb which, at a finger touch, gives us light by 
night, is not itself electricity. It is only one of a 
thousand contacts with the element which courses 
through the wire, pours out of the power house, 
and flows unceasing through the unseen channels 
provided for it in the wide universe. Particular 
prophetic passages are not the sum total of proph- 
ecy; but they are the illuminations of contact 
with that strong, steady current of hope, which 
ran through the book and the life of Israel. 
Furthermore, this hope has been found to be 
ever taking on itself the forms and ideals, and 
even the atmospheric conditions of each age 
through which it passed, expressing itself usually 
in terms of the dominant idea or need of that 
age. Keeping fast its old forms and ideals, it 
Was ever: gathering new means of expression, 
combining and harmonizing both in new messages 
of promise. Messiah was made known to Eve 
as “seed,” the fruit’ of her own body and the 


178 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


child of her heart. To Abraham He was the 
promised ‘“‘seed’”’ in terms of a great posterity. 
To David the promise adds ‘‘son’”’ to the ancient 
idea of the seed. For Moses the Hope takes 
form in types and shadows of the Law, and in 
the figure of the Prophet, the most notable per- 
sonage of that day. Immanuel and the Servant 
appear in the vision of Isaiah. Zechariah sees 
Him, in days of the dual administration of Ze- 
rubbabel and Joshua, as King-Priest. And finally, 
Malachi can even tell us of the herald, who will 
run before the Coming Lord. 


There are, at the same time, certain Messianic 
phrases and ideas, which run regularly through 
large parts, some of them through the the whole, 
of the Old Testament. One of these is the Divine 
name, ‘‘Jehovah,”’ signifying “‘He will be,” both 
the personal name of the Deity and at the same 
time the name always associated with the promise 
and with the everlasting covenant. Does Elohim 
put Abraham to trial, Genesis 22? It is, how- 
ever, Jehovah, who stays the father’s uplifted 
hand, and opens up with the renewed Covenant- 
promise a future of blessedness. 


Insistence, throughout the Old Testament, on 
the personality of God, which could only come to 
full realization and find its final guarantee in the 
Incarnation, is thus illuminated with Messianic 
light. Righteousness and holiness, the two essen- 
tial attributes of the Deity, are bound up, espe- 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 179 


cially by Isaiah, with the hope of Messiah's 
salvation. The Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, 
and The Day of the Lord were always so gener- 
ally recognized as associated with the Messiah, 
that in the New Testament they need no explana- 
tion, but pass without a question into its parables 
and records, as also into the Christian’s vocabu- 
lary. The Branch, The Son of David, The Prince 
of Peace, the King, the Priest, the Prophet, the 
Servant, and other Messianic titles have been 
followed by us in preceding pages through the 
centuries or generations of their usage in the Old 
Testament. How rich is the contribution made 
by the Old Testament to the vesture and titles 
and attributes of the Coming King! 

With the continuance and development of the 
life of the Old Testament people the Messianic 
ideal also grew, and developed from the primitive 
and simple to the more complex and detailed. 
Adam and Eve could not have understood and 
received comfort from the more elaborate por- 
traiture of Messiah in Isaiah’s visions: nor would 
promises of deliverance through prophet, priest 
or king have had any meaning for Eve. But she 
knew the meaning of a mother’s hope for her own 
child. Family ties and heart needs were near and 
evident to her. So through promise in the com- 
ing of the Saviour as the child of woman her face 
was lifted toward the future Divine event. This 
germ of faith developed into larger form in the 


180 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


Abrahamic covenant, and took clear-cut outline 
in the promised Son of David. The Psalms and 
Isaiah developed even more distinctly some fea- 
tures of the Davidic covenant. Jeremiah and 
Zechariah, in following generations, brought into 
larger development Isaiah’s earlier and simpler 
figure of the Branch. Isaiah began with the meta- 
phor of the new sprouting life after the winter’s 
deadness; then advanced to the new shoot or 
branch growing out of the stock, or stump, of the 
fallen house of Jesse. Jeremiah combined it with 
Isaiah’s King of Righteousness: ‘‘I will cause a 
Branch of Righteousness to grow up unto David” ; 
and Zechariah adds the form of Isaiah 53: “My 
Servant the Branch.’ Even within one book, that 
of Isaiah, we have growth and progress in his 
conception of the Messiah, from general to indi- 
vidual, from national to personal. 


There is ungrounded and foolish fear in some 
minds over the use of the words “‘progress”’ and 
‘development’? of Bible doctrine or revelation. 
Where or why such antipathy should have origi- 
nated, it is difficult to answer. It is foolish and 
indefensible, because it is untrue. Growth and 
progress in the gracious unfolding of the Messi- 
anic hope is a Scriptural reality, a blessed reality. 
It is understood that God and His truth are the 
same in essence from the beginning to the com- 
pletion of revelation. But the manner and degree 
of the unfolding of His truth changed and ad- 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 181 


vanced with each age. The glorious vision of 
Isaiah on the first pages of Genesis would be 
unthinkable. Sages and saints needed to learn 
many lessons, pass through hard trials, feel the 
keen pang of many sorrows, look back over a 
long period of Divine leading, before their hearts 
were ready for the mysteries of Isaiah 53. A 
child has the same life and takes the same food 
in essence as the grown man. But through the 
years there is for him progress in food, in capac- 
ity, and in understanding. So also in Prophecy 
there must be milk for babes before the strong 
meat for men can be offered. Our Lord could 
not tell His disciples all things, for there were 
some things which they could not bear, until the 
time of larger spiritual capacity had come. It is 
in the unfolding of the Messianic hope that we 
see so clearly the leading and developing love of 
our Father for us. 


We have also found in our studies of Prophecy, 
that it is not a formal thing nor a mechanical 
record, but a living reality. It is the life-blood 
of the Old Testament, coursing through all its 
chapters, the beating heart whose pulsations can 
be heard anywhere in its many books. Some- 
times underneath dry and parched prairies streams 
of water run. The sunken well brings the stream 
to the surface, to quench thirst and irrigate fields. 
Such a current of hope runs under all of the Old 
Testament, brought to the surface here and there 


182 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


for rich blessings, when some prophet has tapped 
that living stream. This current of thinking and 
hoping runs steadily through all the Old Testa- 
ment days and books, and at last finds its outlet 
into the New Testament, there to make still richer 
deposits of truth. But whether in Old or New, 
it is always the same river of life. So Paul rea- 
soned and illustrated out of the Old Testament, 
that Jesus was Messiah, at Thessalonica, Acts’. 
17:2-3; and Christ so opened the minds of His 
disciples to understand, after His death and resur- 
rection, Luke 24:44-46. The New Testament 
believers saw their living Lord in all the experi- 
ences and longings of the Old Testament days. 


With such understanding of the Messianic 
message of the Old Testament those disciples 
made constant and most practical use of it in life 
and service. In trial or perplexity or sorrow, 
under attack, or making appeal for faith to 
others, they turned with confidence to the prophe- 
cies of the Old Testament, using them as irresist- 
ible and beyond controversy. The Jesus, whom 
they had seen and loved, was for them also the 
glorious living Messiah of the Old Testament. 
The Gospels, from the first chapter of Matthew 
onward to the end of John, are filled with the 
appeal to prophecy. Our Lord Himself was con- 
stantly using it to comfort His disciples, to put 
His enemies and accusers to rout, to reach hearts 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 183 


and bring them to penitence, and to stay His own 
heart in dark hours. 

Mark began with Old Testament prophetical 
messages the Gospel which was written to lead 
Gentiles to Christ. Luke’s Gospel for the world 
fills its first chapters with Old Testament sacrifice 
and psalms. John thinks of the Old Creation 
Story as leading up to Him who makes all things 
new. Of course, Matthew joins his message by 
genealogy back to Abraham and David. 


Romans is an interpretation of Isaiah and Gen- 
esis in terms of Jesus Christ. Hebrews makes its 
appeal for steadfast faith in Christ by bringing 
Psalms and all the Law to prove the superiority 
of Jesus Christ. Every one of its chapters is an 
Old Testament appeal for Jesus as the Messiah. 
These Old Testament witnesses around us call us 
and cheer us on in the great race set before us. 
The book of Revelation is the vision of the Risen 
Christ, set in the framework and imagery of Old 
Testament apocalyptic books. Take the Old 
Testament out of the New, and see what mutila- 
tion has resulted! It was thus that the hearts 
of the Gospel days needed the Old Testament, 
and used it always and everywhere. ; 

The Old Testament was used by the New 
Testament writers to adorn their messages with 
grace and strength. The sermons of the first 
missionaries, recorded for us in the Book of Acts, 
were preached from Old Testament texts, and its 


184 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


points of appeal sent home with Old Testament. 
illustrations. Peter, Stephen and Paul all brought 
their great climaxes of appeal with Old Testa- 
ment history or psalms. Stephen’s speech fol- 
lowed the ancient history of Israel until it arrived 
at the golden age of David and Solomon, from 
which he skillfully passed to Jesus, the Son of 
David and Prince of Peace. 


The clear, strong arguments throughout the 
Letter to the Romans are Old Testament inter- 
pretations. Here the Law, the Covenant, right- 
eousness, holiness) Adam, Abraham, Jacob, 
Moses, David, Isaiah, and Hosea all figure promi- 
nently. Our Lord Himself was always holding 
the attention of His hearers by appeal to their 
own Bible. The Book of Revelation found in the 
Old Testament prophets the numbers, figures, 
imagery, and tender phrases, to give its strange 
beauty and power to the book which was found 
worthy to close the whole canon of Scripture. 
For in it the Old and New meet, to challenge the 
love and admiration of all ages. 


It will be profitable to our modern study and 
teaching of the New Testament, if we can have 
always at hand the help which the Old Testament 
only can offer. ‘The New is really unintelligible 
without the Old, from which it takes its begin- 
ning, draws its truths, illustrations and language, 
and finds proof of its Gospel message. We have 
been too ready to part the two asunder, and hold 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 185 


fast to the New, while we abandon the Old to the 
whims of rationalists. If there were no Old, the 
New would be an enigma. Possibly the phrase 
describing the faithful scribe as ‘bringing forth 
things old and new,” means this very thing: in- 
terpreting the Old in terms of the New, and 
adorning the New with the matchless beauties of 
the Old. There is a wonderful Gospel appeal 
made possible to him, who will use with under- 
standing love the Prophets’ vision of Messiah. 


The Old Testament is an unfinished book. Its 
longed-for and promised consummation never 
came. It left its people in a state worse in its 
latter than in its former days. It also would 
forever remain an enigma without the New, like 
the restless, wandering Jew, who finds no place 
of resting for the sole of his feet, the man indeed 
without a country. So it would be without destiny 
or completeness, its conclusion the sad note of 
despair of the Book of Ecclesiastes. All is vanity 
indeed if the Old Testament is all. It is so easy, 
as it is also so right and proper, to lead hearts 
through the visions and longings of the Old Tes- 
tament to the New Testament fulfillment in 
Christ. 

The Old Testament is a very human book, full 
of sound sense and a true and thorough psychol- 
ogy. It is a wide and fruitful field for the study | 
of man’s nature, his sins, sorrows, needs, dangers. 
While it calls to life, it also tells of sin, judgment 


ne 8 ee ee 


186 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


and soul-loss. From its honest method of dealing 
with men and their sins and their yearnings the 
way is clear and straight to Christ. It raises 
questions, He answers them. The hope that filled 
the Old Testament hearts with the intensest yearn- 
ing ever known and recorded, could not be dis- 
appointed. To meet and satisfy it God sent forth 
His own Son. 

All along that highway of the Old Testament, 
so often spoken of by Isaiah, the arrows and index 
fingers all point in the right direction—to Galilee 
and Calvary and Olivet. The saints who walked 
there adorned the way with fair flowers of 
thought and expression. The monuments of their 
pilgrimage through the ages remain to us as the 
gems of Old Testament song and story. And the 
songs sung by those pilgrims on their journey 
toward the New Zion have never been hushed, 
lingering still in the vales through which they 
went, and finding echo in every church on earth. 
We can use with power today the message of the 
Christ in the Old Testament, as He Himself used 
it so often and so effectively. The Old Testament 
has given expression to the deepest need of the 
whole world, ancient and modern, as no other 
book has even attempted to do. There is no 
other fulfillment except in Christ. No completer 
and more evident fulfillment could be conceived 
of than that which the Gospel offers. If in the 
days of apostles a pagan world could be shown 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 187 


the glories of Jesus Christ through the Old 
Testament Scriptures, as paralleled by the New - 
Testament revelation, why not make the same 
great appeal today to our new paganism? More 
preaching and more teaching of the Old Testa- 
ment! Not as Jewish literature or fine archzo- 
logical remains; but again today, just as in those 
first days, as the book of the Living and Saving 
Christ. We shall be foolish indeed to abandon 
so rich, so varied, so human, so Divine an evan- 
_ gelistic aid. 


But what about the Jew? Is he not to have a 
Saviour? We are forgetting our duty to him, as 
enjoined on us in our own New Testament: “‘to 
the Jew first.” Certainly he has some right of 
consideration in what should be his own house- 
hold of faith. Although a wanderer from home, 
he is still our elder brother, with right to some 
place in our thought, and some part in our patri- 
mony. We have allowed to slip from our con- 
sideration Paul’s tender appeal for the Jews, his 
own loved people, in Romans 9-17, or we should 
not be keeping the door of hope shut in their 
faces. Paul did and gave much for us. May we 
never forget his kinsman according to the flesh; 
‘‘who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and 
the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of 
the law, and the service, and the promises; whose 
are the fathers.” Yea, and more: “of whom 
Christ came, as concerning the flesh, who is God 


188 THE CHRIST OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 


over all, blessed forever” (Rom. 9:3-5). “Christ 
for the world we sing.” So let us sing; but not 
forget the part of the world to which He came 
first, rather to whom He was coming through all 
the ages: the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 

Years ago when my congregation was helping 
to sustain a successful local mission work among 
our Jewish neighbors, the young Jewish evangelist 
employed in the work would often say to me in 
pets of impatience: ‘‘Why spend all your money 
in world missions and home equipment; why or- 
ganize so elaborately your Gentile forces? Con- 
vert the Jew! and he will convert the world! 
Convert the Jew! and you will raise up and send 
to the ends of the earth a thousand flaming 
Pauls.”’ 

There may be for us much food for sober 
thought in what that Jewish enthusiast said. But 
if we ever bring the modern Jew to his saving 
Christ—and God forbid that we should forget or 
fail to try—it must be by the path which leads 
to Christ through his and our Old Testament. 
We must be able to bring together for him into 
one story the Christ of Prophecy and the Jesus 
of Bethlehem, Galilee, Calvary, and Glory. Then 
it can be fulfilled, as it is written: “the fulness of 
the Gentiles gathered in; and so shall all Israel 
be saved.” 


INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


GENERAL INDEX 





INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES | 


GENESIS PAGE PAGE 
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PO PA CSS) SERN STU ees RAR S| 
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A PI a a a MA EN Ered et loci hd i ta Na teme 100 
LPS SSRI DEEN IOC Sit lesb Ah Mea ane ean OH 74, 84 
SES NAN MTN Raat Eat Fini Yai oor ea Mee LTT oy 
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“A ee A oa RS, | ISAIAH 
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retire hora hs. Vek 52.458 


EXODUS 


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So AH EL nN ALO 217 tos 
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Pie ite ae recn re MeL Mme C Nf er 
OPC emit: sean aes aoe a 18S 
1 Seay ame aes ee AD thes & 
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DEUTERONOMY yA ak PE Rs Oo AS GI SI ae 33 
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| SAMUEL Fe RS Rares 
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NUMBERS 


192 © *—sour INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


PAGE 
SSB hile le RL eR LOO 
AZ 245215 eee 159 


pg a0 138 VSO TSGud Si. 
175, 180, 181 


DS? 1 eSle Wiel is P 160 
OS ALG ee) Salone el ne iin 26S 
527.0 ies td | Uae te 220H BG 
53:10-12 Uae baie 
535110 107 
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O1s Wea Nitin e ) aera Te OL LA 
63 11-6 ob OSD eens Ue | 
JEREMIAH 
OTe enc Se es LPO foi ate fae RCS 
DOSS Wet ee id ne OMT OG EO 
26:18". pr Ml ae 9 
31 331-34 108 
31:35-36 109 
Soe 109 
eS, toa ES ly 110 
33 :20-21 111 
33 23-26 50 
De eke 11 
EZEKIEL 
24:1 112 
Sd et tee 15 
SS AP Drama rn aie Warns. cal tn bi 
RP AT CAO 31 Ale eeu ae 
ROOT Tae i ee ee 
A ARS, peal t iat ail oe ee ed 
Ci aye ees Ge” aan MN eae) BY. 
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POA So ty Neate. 1 cee Na, ae 
GEL CTS (ed alot £5 
CO VG eres i Ls Gee bo 
OSTA ta ne | ew eee be 
DANIEL 
7114 Sy gt ot ie LOS Ee 
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ts ee 117 
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HOSEA 


JOEL 


AMOS 


MICAH 


HAGGAI 


ZECHARIAH 


INDEX OF SCRIPTURE REFERENCES 


JOHN 


ACTS 
2:29-31 1S 
Bats 1k 
3 22-26 
ysl 


ROMANS | 


PAGE 


83 
84 
116 
116 
126 


136 
116 
130 


174 
29 
30 

182 

171 


62 
19 
31 
113 
1B) 
173 
172 
127 


81 

26 

66 

108 

78 

22 

ah ao 
735,28 
155 


| 25, 182 


171 
25 


78 
173 
138 
103 


{93 


PAGE 

AS BA sce arp Sieh 148 

P20 LUN Ras 20 8 cE ESC 

} bolhy WARY ate Paget ies hl ty 

I CORINTHIANS 
AEA AOR Ra Cary HU be LCI Sy 
{I CORINTHIANS 

LT sory cul Ven 19 

oh OS A ese mee MDH) eka lira 
GALATIANS 

hes cep MTT 52 

3:29 103 
PHILIPPIANS 

ep ES NV haga a 170 

3:9 : 148 
COLOSSIANS 

2:17 2s a i eee 60 
Il TIMOTHY 

ns SS Wy A al ORE eth 23 

HEBREWS 

Les Bi Se 78 

2213 172 

Saye 85 

5:3 78 

Ow): 85 

fay 85 

Peis sit 59 

835 59, 60 

9:22 nt (G2 

9 :23 59 

9 :24 59 

10:1 60 

II PETER 

1 :13-18 ee oe ate COG 

thane RE Sass! age 
REVELATION 

Lz] a ee: 127 

17:1 Peal Ota. that 20 

yds UP a ee ae 20 


GENERAL INDEX 


PAGE 
Aramaic, in Daniel . ; 116 
Atonement, vicarious , 164 
Balaam : 2 62 
Bible, unity: ofh : 183 
historic periods : 39 
Canon of Prophecy, Hebrew 10 
Ceremonies, fulfilled in Christ . 59 
Christ, argument for own Deity 31 
exaltation of ‘ 170 
resurrection of . : 80, ‘171, 173 
sufferings of . 89, 159, 166 
transfiguration OFo ts : ! See 
His view of Old Testament . 20, 28, 31 
Chronology, antediluvian . : . 40 
Covenant . ; 51, "69, 106, 108, “110, 115 
Criticism, radical, ‘assumptions Of. ‘ : A te 
methods 102 
of Isaiah . 135 
of Micah . 102 
Daniel, date of . 115 
Development of Bible Doctrines 180 
Ethics of Old Testament . 96 
Ezekiel, divisions of Book 111 
Law of 114 
Galilee 142 
Gog, Magog . ‘ 113 
Gospels, use of Old Testament ‘compared : 183 
Hebrew People, national life : ANP je 
Immanuel . 37, 136 
Book of . 140 
passages in Isaiah Pa & 
Isaiah, criticism of Pee &)) 
Quotations in . 140 
Unity of yee bie Cf: 
Jehovah, Divine Name. . . 45, 178 
Jeremiah, divisions of Book of tates 
Jews, our duty to : er eae} 
John, method of interpretation ‘ te ieee 
John the Baptist (the apa Ga : ba A ee 
Messianic Hope 41, 38, ‘121, 176 
Names. < [Pe Vel tet oe ue 28 
Nationalism . : 22, 103.1507 155) 166, 169 
Promises to Patriarchs er ely fete! im tele en ae 
fT Vist) yomergt ns Sei ter epi lie a dele Aa a 

Title . . . 12, 69, 85, 99, 100, 116, 121, 129, 
136, 142, 179 
Micah, Comments on 5:25 ; ody? ec On 
criticism of i 102 
Quotations in ; _ 98, 140 


GENERAL INDEX 


Moffatt, translation of Isaiah 53 . 
Offerings ; ; 
Old Testament, evangelistic | use . of 
Passover . ‘ 
Paul, method of interpretation ; 
Pentecost : 
Personality of God . 
Peter, method of interpretation 
Philip, method of interpretation 
Predictive Prophecy . : 
Prophecy, historic periods of 
views of . Sat 
Prophet, functions of 
Prophets, line of . 


“Psalm of Suffering Servant . of Jehovah” 


Quotations, in Isaiah 
in Micah 
in Zechariah 

Redemption . ? 

Resurrection . 

Righteousness, problem of 

Septuagint . 

“Servant of Jehovah” 

Shiloh . : 

Star, Messianic. symbol 

Transfiguration 

Virgin, the ae 

Words, good old . . : 

Zechariah, Comments on 6:11- 13 . 
Quotations in . 


. 80, 171, 173 


. 12, 56, 86 
23 

93 

178 

25 

21 

103 

92 

32 

15 

65 

159 

ee kae 
- 98, 140 
. 126 
152 


He ias 
. 40, 42 
. 150 
52 

64 

26 

139 

164 

124 

126 











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Date Due 


























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Speer Library 


Princeton Theological Seminary 


The Christ of the Old Testament 


BS648.5 .M15 








